History

The Jersey Shore Running Club has been an active supporter of Special Olympics. It has assisted at the Monmouth-Ocean County Special Olympics track and Field Meet since the early 1990's. In 1996 the Special Olympics approached the Club to put on a fund raising event. The Relay was first held in April of 1997. That first event consisted of just over individual 25 runners each running a single mile along the course. It was so popular that the following year teams were instituted and the level of participation increased to 40 teams. It has grown in size each year as most teams come back and recruit additional teams to participate. As a result the Relay has use “word of mouth” as its primary method of increasing the event size. Over the years the amount raised for Special Olympics has also increased from that first year of $2000 to approximately $60,000 the past several years.

In 2009 we added the Asbury Park Half Marathon and along with the 5K we now call the day the RunAPalooza.  We added the Jersey Shore Dream Center as a beneficiary in 2011.

In 2022 the Jersey Shore Dream Center became the primary beneficiary along with many other local charitable organizations who support the event.