By San Diego and Chicago Manager Chelsey Stone
Dylan (left) and Alex (right) sit in the Pacific Beach Milestone Running store.
Above all, City Fit Tours values the opportunity to showcase our cities. Our guides love their cities, enjoy learning its history (even those born and raised there), and are passionate about sharing that love and learning with visitors. But we’re not the only ones showcasing our cities through running. We’ve gotten to know some of the running communities in our cities, and we’d like to showcase one of these for you here.
When I moved from Chicago to San Diego, the first place I went to meet people was Milestone Running’s Monday Night Run Club. I was welcomed by the other runners, each week I finding someone new to run and swap life stories with. Within a few weeks I was feeling like a regular as I said hi to those I had gotten to know. Alex Sakelarios and Dylan Marx, the hosts, were kind enough to sit down with me to talk about this awesome community they’ve created for runners.
Runners mill about inside and outside the store, catching up with friends, before the run starts.
monday run club
Every Monday evening dozens of runners gather in front of Milestone Running in Pacific Beach, San Diego. As the 6 p.m. start draws near, runners can be seen jogging in from all directions.
Around 6:15 p.m. Milestone employees and hosts Alex Sakelarios and Dylan Marx hush the dozens of conversations happening to go over the route and distance options (usually three, four, and six miles) they’ve drawn on a large chalkboard.
Before heading out, Sakelarios snaps a photo of the crowd, then they're off in groups of twos and threes. Any cars unlucky enough to be crossing the road must patiently wait as runners go by.
A focus on community
Part of what makes this run club unique is how Alex and Dylan approach their role. Alex explained, “We are runners. We just happen to be here and have some more responsibilities, like filling up the water jug. But at the end of the day, our motivation is what is best for our runners. It's a little bit of ‘what would we want to do?’” They channel their “runner selves” when deciding the routes, how often to have vendors, and other considerations.
Alex in front of a map of the Pacific Beach and Mission Beach neighborhoods.
Alex and Dylan value community and genuine connection. Each Monday runners start their week meeting old and new friends. As Marx observed, “People [are] having conversations and catching up with each other from last week, ‘Remember you told me that’ or 'Oh, how's the job?’ We're seeing this cohesiveness with the people coming. We're building and maintaining friendships and relationships.”
Celebrating Pacific Beach
While Milestone's North Park store also has a weekly run, Alex and Dylan capitalize on their Pacific Beach (or “PB” as the locals call it) location. Alex said, “Running by the beach is awesome. We always dangle that above our North Park counterparts, ‘cool, go run an urban loop.’”
But why do that, he says, when you can “come run by the beach or the bay.” While they do welcome runners from across town, Dylan notes, “we have this cool PB community that's embraced it. They have their offshoots, like brunch clubs, [so] you have genuine, big groups of friends having breakfast parties.”
Alex does the smell test for the night’s pineapple and tells everyone it’s perfectly ripe and should be eaten soon.
The Grand Prize Pineapple
Once runners are back at the store, it’s time for the raffle. Sakelarios raffles prizes based on the national days. National avocado day? He raffled guacamole. National chocolate milkshake day? He raffled a milkshake from the Jack-in-the-Box across the street. The one thing you can always count on is the pineapple.
In North Park Greg Lemon, one of the store’s owners, used to raffle a pineapple or watermelon as an extra prize. But, Sakelarios said, “it turned out people stopped caring about the watermelon; they only cared about the pineapple. Some have waited years to win. It's almost turned into a small achievement, a check off the bucket list—probably a little bit more special [because] it’s named ‘the grand prize’.”
While Pacific Beach’s ocean routes are hard to beat, Milestone offers numerous runs throughout the week, including speed workouts and trail runs. There’s a run for every ability, pace, or terrain.
