Baywatch was a popular show when I was growing up in the 90s. Who could forget Pamela Anderson’s breasts bouncing under a thin red bathing suit or David Hasselhoff’s bronzed body as he ran toward the water to save lives?
In case you have forgotten or missed it, watch the opener here:
If the show was meant to be anything other than a thirst trap, the message missed me.
There’s also Bo Derek’s famous beach run:
But, if you’ve ever run on the beach for longer than a two-minute movie clip, you know it’s not as glamourous as it looks. Beach running is hard and it hurts.
Three Reasons Not to Run on a Beach
1. Plantar Fasciitis. I wanted to make the most of a cold day at the beach, so I ran the length and back to build up enough heat that I could dive into the ocean without turning into an ice cube.
After the drive home, I went to step out of my car and I couldn’t walk.
I’d experienced the achy cramp of plantar fasciitis over the years, but there was nothing like the crippling pain that came after the beach run.
It turns out beach running stretches the muscles and ligaments in your feet in a way that concrete or trail running doesn’t, making you more likely to suffer from plantar fasciitis, according to Rothman Orthopaedics.
Beach running also leaves you more likely to sprain an ankle or experience Achilles tendonitis. Running is hard enough on the body, let’s not choose to make ourselves more injury prone by running on the beach.
2. No shade. I go to the beach to be under direct sunlight. There’s nothing better than spending a hot summer day baking on a towel in the sand.
But running long distances means lots of sweat and lots of heat and there’s nothing like direct sunlight to make things worse.
To prevent sunburn—which is an inevitable part of long-distance beach running—you have to slather yourself in sunblock. Sunblock—it smells, it’s greasy, and it’s destroying the ocean.
Skip the sunblock and run somewhere with shade. Problem solved.
3. Sand. Seems pretty obvious—if you run on the beach, there’s going to be sand… everywhere. You can run barefoot by the edge of the ocean—because running anywhere else on the beach will burn—and spend all of your efforts trying to dodge shells, rocks, and broken beer bottles.
Or, you can wear shoes that will fill with sand at every step and will be unusable anywhere else because one beach run is all it takes to have shoes that are forever filled with sand despite your best efforts to clean them.
It’s a lose-lose situation if you ask me.
Want to run at the beach? Try running along a boardwalk. You’ll have a great view—and plenty of opportunities for people watching—but you’ll be less likely to get injured, less covered in sand, and more likely to pass through much needed shade spots.
