For Reach the Beach there were certain pieces of safety equipment each runner was required to have.

I owned one piece - the lighted vest you see pictured there to the left - but I had to get a couple of others specifically for the race.

When I first signed up to do the race I went out and got the headlamp, because I had seen them at Dick’s and figured it was easy enough to buy.

It wasn’t until a couple of days before I left for New Hampshire that I finally took it out of the box, put the batteries in, and tried it on. (I was worried about losing battery life but then I realized we had a bunch of AAA batteries and packed some extras so I didn’t have to worry about it.)

After our meeting the week before the race, I realized I needed a reflective vest. (Well, I knew beforehand but wasn’t sure if I could get away with just the neon vest.) The reflective vest serves two purposes - one is that while you are running, it is a backup for if your neon vest’s battery dies. At least then you’ll have the reflective straps. Also everyone who is not running has to wear the reflective vest outside of the van during the nighttime hours, so it was pretty important that I get one. It was just $7 for a 2-pack on Amazon, and it came the next day, so that was covered.

I took the lighted vest for a spin on my Monday morning run last week just to make sure it was comfortable to run in and everything worked - I did not have the opportunity to do that with the other equipment, but I figured for the 45 minutes I would be running at night I would suffer through whatever. (It turned out to be just 38 minutes!)

The nice thing is without the sun beating down I can tolerate most conditions when I’m running - it’s the heat that really messes with me.

I don’t run in the dark all that often. The test run on Monday might have been the first time I actually used the lighted vest. For my winter training I was always able to find time during daylight hours to run, and if it wasn’t daytime I usually just used the tread.

For my summer training there was only one time I ran in the evening after dark back in my 2023 Chicago training, and I started before it got dark and finished on the Esplanade in an area where there were a lot of streetlights.

I am glad I did Reach the Beach for a number of reasons. I haven’t decided if I’ll ever do it again…but I’m glad it served as the impetus to get these pieces of equipment.

Even if I never use them again for a Reach the Beach-type race where I’m running in the middle of the night, I will definitely use them again in some other context.