Thousands of spectators and competitors filled the beach and boardwalk Saturday morning in Ocean City for the third annual Memorial Beach Challenge.
The event attracted a field of more than 500 for a beach obstacle course race between Fifth and 14th streets. More than 200 children participated in a kids’ run, and another handful of individuals and relays competed in a paddleboard race.
In just its third year, the event promises to become a Memorial Day Weekend tradition in Ocean City.
Henry Notaro, a 53-year-old builder from Northfield, won the beach race, which includes a course over sand mounds and into water-filled pits and other hazards.
“It was the toughest workout I ever did,” said Notaro, a three-hour marathoner.
The hardest part?
“Had to be those damned moguls … and running in the sand comes a close second,” Notaro said. “But I never had more fun in my life.”
Brian Pasternak, a 31-year-old member of the Ocean City Beach Patrol, won the individual paddleboard competition on a 12-foot prone board.
Pasternak said he had an advantage paddling into the wind over Sven Peltonen, who finished second on a 14-foot stand-up paddleboard. Peltonen had won the individual event in its first two years.
The race featured a triangular course with competitors competing loops that included legs in and out of the surf and obstacles on the beach.
The Memorial Beach Challenge benefits the Navy SEAL Foundation, the 31 Heroes Project (named for the SEALS killed in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan on August 6, 2011) and the Travis Manion Foundation. Manion was a U.S. Naval Academy graduate and a Marine from Doylestown, Pa., who was killed in action in Iraq on April 29, 2007.
“It’s impressive to see the Ocean City community come out year after year,” said Maura Lukevics, chief financial officer for the 31 Heroes Project.
Lukevics said the event raised $35,000 last year, and she expects that three-year fundraising total from the Memorial Beach Challenge to exceed $100,000.
What started as a single CrossFit workout in 2011 has now become a nationwide series of competitions that benefit veterans’ families.
“It gives athletes a way to give back,” Lukevics said.
Mike Vaules, a former Ocean City Beach Patrol member and one of the organizers who helped bring the event to Ocean City in 2013, said the mission of the Beach Challenge is not lost even on his own young children, who participated in the kids’ run.
“They understand the meaning of Memorial Day,” Vaules said.
- Check for complete results from the event (which had not been posted as of early Saturday afternoon): MemorialBeachChallenge.com
- Share your photos on social media. Use #mbc2015 as a hashtag.
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