Killingly may not technically be the farthest away as the crow flies, but it’s close when it comes to how long it takes to actually get there, a combination of sheer distance and also removal from either I-84 or I-395. It was about an hour and a half to get out to this corner of the state, on a quiet morning after our first snow of the season, a decent snowfall that actually covered everything and looked great.

The race was at Ellis Tech High School, perhaps the first high school I’ve been to that backs into a small plane airstrip. We were informed that if we managed to beat the race organizer, who referred to himself as “Jingles Tinseltoes” and was dressed as an elf and gave us all a one-minute head start, we’d be presented with a certificate attesting to that fact. Not many managed to—just six—and I wasn’t one of them… But thanks to his status as a pacer, he didn’t end up counting in our age group, so hey, I managed a second place finish. I tried hard to stay ahead of him, and then catch up with him, which helped push me to what felt like a pretty fast finish.

Reindeer Dash | 2.5M | 12/10/17 | 19:45 | 61/169