She Runs by the Seashore

In a continuation of running in cool places on Delmarva, I started 2021 by running with my friends Nicole and Lisa in Oxford, Maryland.

Since the pandemic has quashed further-away travel for me for now, I have been enjoying exploring local spots. Nicole and I went to Hoopers Island the week before we ran in Oxford, and the three of us also ran in Vienna. After this run, we also ran on the Georgetown-Lewes Trail. Since I just blogged about that trail, I don’t plan to do a separate post, but it was fun, and we got to run all of the completed portion of the trail.

Because of COVID, we all drove separately and met at a parking lot off the Strand. Oxford is a small town, so we were able to run almost every street. I’d never run in Oxford before, and after the run, CityStrides logged that I had run 70.91 percent of Oxford’s streets, and we did come across at least one that wasn’t open to the public, so all the streets might not be runnable.

This was only my second time visiting Oxford, and the first was during a group visit as part of MATPRA Media Marketplace. It’s a little under an hour from Salisbury and about six miles off Route 50 toward the Chesapeake Bay.

We ran on a cold and overcast day, and it was pretty quiet, but it seemed like almost everyone we did see wished us “Happy New Year,” as it was New Year’s Day. At one point, someone offered to take a photo of us, and it turned out she had also run the Marine Corps Marathon (I was wearing my shirt from the 2019 race).

There was a lot of unique architecture to see, a cute library like none I’d ever seen, and various places where we could see the water. At one point, I stopped to look at a totem pole in someone’s yard and then noticed a sign that read, “Wear a mask or are you dumb as shit.” We all enjoyed that, and it was an unexpected find. I also took a photo of a handmade cat speed limit sign.

It was a fun way to see the town, and although we ran 10 miles, it seemed to go by quickly as we saw new sites.

Like almost everywhere on the Eastern Shore, it was a flat run, with my Garmin only logging 54 feet of elevation gain after the elevation correction. I’m surprised it was even that much.

Afterward, we stopped at Oxford Social Cafe, which we’d popped into earlier during our run to use the bathroom. It was such a cute spot with friendly staff, and I got a latte, along with a quart of some Scottish Highland Creamery ice cream to take home. Then we all headed over to St. Michaels for a couple more stops.

There’s also a seasonal ferry, the Oxford-Bellevue Ferry. It was not open when we ran there, but that could be another cool run idea, as I’ve enjoyed taking the Upper Ferry as part of runs here in Wicomico County before.

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