I don’t run. Not for fun, not for sport, and certainly not for 26.2 miles through coastal humidity. And I never thought avoiding self-imposed exhaustion would be an unpopular opinion—but among my generation—Gen-Z—it’s starting to seem that way.
In recent years, participation by teens and twenty-somethings in endurance sports, like marathons and triathlons, has seen an undeniable increase in popularity—including in Cape May County. The Cape just hosted the Stone Harbor Triathlon and the internationally attended Escape the Cape triathlon in Cape May. It’s true that both of these races have seen decreases in participation over the years—but at the same time, they’ve seen notable increases in participants under 30. The increase is especially striking in Escape the Cape’s Olympic Triathlon race, where there were 54 participants under the age of 30 in 2019, the year before the pandemic, but 109 in last month’s race—nearly double the athletes, all around Gen-Z or younger.
And the lingering question in my head is—why? I have friends who refused to play tag as kids, suddenly running 10-milers and using workout trackers as their primary form of social media. It’s baffling. But maybe it shouldn’t be.
That most of the growth happened primarily after the pandemic begs a seemingly obvious conclusion. It even has a name: The Pandemic Running Boom. Given social distancing and quarantining requirements, indoor workouts were no longer sensible options, and nearly 25% of gyms in the US permanently closed. So, to those who were antsy to move outside, increasingly health-conscious, and tired of making sourdough, running outside became a clear solution. In 2019, 8,347 people under thirty finished the NYC Marathon. By 2024, that number went up to 12,675.
I recently spoke to Tianna Biscone, the first-place finisher in her age and gender category in the Escape the Cape Olympic Triathlon, and her experience seemingly fits that narrative. “Once I graduated, I was kind of at a loss for what to do for exercise and I had a lot of friends who got into marathoning, so it was kind of like the natural next pipeline, especially starting during COVID,” she told me. “Like, what am I gonna do with my time? Like, I’m at home with my two brothers and my parents.”
Still, I don’t think the running surge among Gen-Z is just COVID-induced health anxiety and boredom. Tianna’s technically a ‘cusper’ in generations—at 27 years old, she just made the cut to be one of us Zoomers, which has an official start date of 1996. But that also means the pandemic’s timing was especially daunting; she was a senior in college, just about to join the workforce, with plans to move from her hometown of Garden City, NY to London—plans that were all upended.
“All of my initial job offers were either on hold or on hiring freezes, so graduating during that kind of pivotal time in the spring was, I think, a pretty stressful time for most people.” She went on, “I felt this sense of, not despondency, but I guess just sadness is the only way to put it… I had all these plans and ideas for myself that clearly did not happen.”
And running, she told me, was part of the answer: “So I think that’s also a big reason why I turned to distance running, besides having all of the free time—there’s got to be something to give me structure to my day, and marathon training is very structured in that way. So I took a lot of solace in that.”
But that sentiment isn’t unique to Tianna. Gen-Z is facing a time of extreme instability, no less because of the universally beloved experience of a quarter-life crisis. Economic and political uncertainty have curtailed the traditional plans for adulthood many had: Hiring for entry-level positions has dropped 23% since 2020, many being replaced by AI; the number of first-time homebuyers is half the historical norm; Gen-Z is dating less, and delaying having children due to economic uncertainty. And these factors may play a role in the concerning mental health crisis Gen-Z faces, wherein 61% have been medically diagnosed with an anxiety condition. So endurance training, a sport where progress is nearly guaranteed, can become a genuinely helpful, if exhausting, coping mechanism.
Like Tianna told me, “It was a nice feeling of knowing that I could follow a plan and follow through with it.”
And for the director of Escape the Cape, Stephen del Monte, the mental benefits of training are no doubt an appeal for newcomers. “That’s my medication. I think it’s all of our medications,” he said. “Forget about the physical benefit—the mental benefit… I mean, it’s just, it’s everything.” And, emphasizing each syllable, he repeated: “It is everything.”
But the economic and political landscape affects all generations across the board. So it may not be that Zoomers are running away from their anxieties, but perhaps towards things increasingly harder to find: identity and community. The former US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy recently declared that the US is experiencing a loneliness epidemic, and the statistics are most staggering among Zoomers, of whom 73% report feelings of loneliness some or all of the time. It’s even earned us the prestigious title of The Loneliest Generation. But endurance sports like running seem to be filling in that gap.
Running can give a sense of identity, with nearly half of Gen-Z runners now considering it a part of who they are. But perhaps more importantly, it provides a growing sense of community. Strava, a social media app disguised as a fitness tracker, found that 58% of survey respondents made new friends via fitness groups, while nearly 1 in 5 Gen-Zers went on a date with someone they met through exercise. In fact, they were 4 times more likely to want to meet people under those sweaty conditions than at a bar. “Telling people I don’t use Strava is like telling them I don’t have a cell phone,” Tianna told me, laughing, but dead serious.
The social aspect of training then becomes a self-reinforcing cycle, where group runs, bike rides, or hikes result in 40% longer workouts. And it’s that social influence, Stephen argues, that’s the primary driving force for this trend: “You see someone who looks like you doing it—someone who’s a little older, or even the same age—and suddenly it doesn’t feel impossible.”
And Strava or not, running still helped Tianna find her people. Friends got her into running during COVID, and despite the exhaustion, the money, the elbow fractures, the community makes it worth it. After all, this is someone who jumped off a ferry and got stung in the face by a jellyfish—twice!—during Escape the Cape, yet she’s more than ready to do it again next year, with a house booked to prove it.
“Obviously I’m not grinning and singing at mile 12 of a half marathon at the end of a half Ironman,” but at the finish line, “I know that I have five friends who have probably really ugly videos of me that we can go back and watch later that night when we’re having dinner, recounting the entire experience. So maybe that’s more why I do it.”
Stephen lovingly calls that sense of communal suffering “curated torture.“
He said: “You’re in a race, running next to a stranger you’ve never met, but you’re both hurting, both driven to finish—and that man or woman becomes your blood brother.” Then, with the fervor of a coach at mile 12: “You can’t do that in a video game. You can’t do that through a DM. You just can’t. And it’s all natural, baby. It’s all natural.”
After my conversation with Stephen, I felt almost involuntarily compelled to run. So I did. At Mile 1, my earbuds broke. After Mile 2, I started to cramp. And at Mile 3, to spare the sweaty details, I confirmed what I already knew: cardio might just not be my thing.
So instead, I lift weights, where the majority of the cardio involved is walking to the gym and fumbling with the plates on the squat rack. There’s just something satisfying about lifting more than the week prior, doing my first pull up, spending most of my time sitting. It’s a time I can turn my brain off, make progress, and fist bump gym bros lifting three times my weight. I love it.
So it may be that Gen-Zers are running away from something, or maybe towards it—or maybe they’re running for no reason at all. But, I suppose, whether it’s being out of breath for 26 miles, finally being able to do a pushup, or jumping off of a ferry just to get stung in the face—sometimes it might just feel good to move.
Mariana is a summer writer for Do the Shore. She graduated with a degree in English from Cornell University, and is an artist. Contact her at mmeriles@cmcherald.com
