Twenty-six year old Brittany Perkins from Wilmington won the 33rd annual Seaside Shuffle, a Wrightsville Beach 5K that lived up to its name this year after being moved from the pavement to the beach strand for the Nov. 22 race.
Despite the cold drizzle and stiff north wind Sunday morning, nearly 100 race participants gathered on the sand behind the Blockade Runner Beach Resort. The course was designed so the men and women started and finished at the same point but ran in opposite directions, with the exception of newlyweds Steve and Vikki Jones.
“This is our first race together, so we decided we would run the same way,” Vikki Jones said, explaining they were honeymooning at the Blockade Runner, saw people gathering for the race and decided to take part.
As runners convened at the starting line, a brief debate over who should run which direction was quickly settled as the women insisted on running north.
It was a calculated choice, race director and participant Tracy Christian admitted, smiling. They wanted the benefit of a tailwind on the way back, and “the beach is better [for running] that way,” she said.
The first and second finishers were women — Perkins in 19:40 and Castle Hayne’s Kimberly Mueller in 20:13. David Southerland was the first man to cross in 20:53, followed by Stuart Ross in 21:31. The men finished from the opposite direction after running south to the N.C. Coast Guard station and back.
Perkins said the adverse conditions took the pressure off.
“I like running in this because there are no expectations,” she said. “I’m not going to get mad about my time if we’re on the sand and it’s raining.”
Both the men and women agreed one of the biggest challenges was locating the firmest sand on which to run.
“You try to run as close to the water as you can without getting your feet wet,” Ross explained. And with everyone hugging the water’s edge, “You try not to hit anybody on the way back.”
Ross, like many of the other participants, is a member of the Wilmington Road Runners Club, the local running group that puts on the Seaside Shuffle every year to raise money for its scholarship fund. This spring, the club will award a $1,000 scholarship to two high school runners — one female and one male — who plan to keep running in college.
The race’s fundraising goal is partly why it was moved to the beach strand; racing on the road requires applying for costlier permits, which would deplete the run’s profits.
The event, which Ross described as “a race for runners by runners,” also serves as a social gathering for the running community.
“It’s fun,” Perkins said, “because you run with different groups of people throughout the week, and then you get to see everybody together at this race.”
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