Believe it or not I’ve only ever run on a beach once.
No really.
Whenever I’ve found myself at the seaside I’ve simply not come prepared.
The one exception to that, I should note, was when we were visiting Scotland. We had done a day trip to St. Andrews north of Edinburgh, and if you hadn’t already figured it out from that single clue, I logged a kilometre of beach running in homage to the famous running film, Chariots of Fire, whose famous opening scene running along a windswept beach was set right where I logged my one and only beach run.
But other than chasing a film location fantasy, sand and I are running strangers.
That is about to change.
Sometime in the next while I’ll be heading off to vacation in a tropical place, and we’ll be there long enough that a) I should probably log a run and b) I should probably try to log a run that is on a beach. Just to say I did. And, also, because I think we’re going to be staying pretty close anyways.
Look, I’m super-comfortable running in snow. We are draped in white for the better part of five or six months in my part of the world. I have run in every kind of snow. They say some of the indigenous people have many, many words for snow, and saying that may be apocryphal or worse, but I think I could probably come up with just as many, and probably one for every kind of snow in every kind of snowy running adventure I’ve taken.
I bring up snow because snow is my only reference for what I think it might be like to run through sand. And I admit I’m probably way off and going to be surprised as heck.
There are probably a long list of words for the type of sand on a beach, too. And I won’t know if the kind of sand on the beach where I am headed will be good for running—firm and fine—or terrible for the effort—soft and rocky, wet and sloppy.
All of that is to say that even after nearly twenty years of running I still get to occasionally experience something new. And that I’m definitely going to show up prepared for the next beach I visit.
