Over the winter, I started talking to Grace about running a 5K, since we had a good time in the shorter kids run in Alaska last year and she has talked a number of times about running in gym class. Today was the day, and I think we picked a good one. A big race, […]

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Voluntown is one of those names that sticks in your mind once you’ve seen it once. I imagined it was founded by volunteers, and people with an affinity for playing that game where you smush two words together to make a new one. An early morning race in an elusive town was a good way […]

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The only race in Connecticut on Easter Sunday seemed like a good time to check off Vernon, previously known to me only as the home of the legendary Rein’s Deli. The course was a nice rails-to-trails packed dirt trail, and the race was low-key and populated with lots of dogs and their owners, and folks […]

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The timing worked out to run this race, this weekend, but I was woefully unprepared to run a 10K. I had only run three times in the previous two weeks, and it had been since October that I’d run more than 6 miles. Still, it wasn’t my worst showing at the distance, and it was […]

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I’m still not quite sure how the town of record is determined, but this race was supposedly in Sprague, though the start, at least, was located in Baltic. Anyway, it was a good race, starting in the small downtown and heading out into the woods along a two-lane road, out and back with a quick […]

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After a year of races every month, a combination of weather, travel, sickness, and general lack of free time conspired to keep me off the race course for a few months at the end of last year and the beginning of this year, so I was happy to get back into it in March for […]

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Making my way through the Middles of Connecticut, -field, -bury, and -town, I headed to Middlefield, and, unexpectedly, found myself in the chalet of a tiny ski resort. It was a brisk, even chilly, day, but good running weather. The race was a pretty good size, maybe 250 people, and they had some surprisingly nice […]

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I’ve been wanting to run the Manchester Road Race since we moved to Connecticut, after hearing about giant size and its long history. Thanksgiving Day can be a tough race to schedule, but I finally got the chance this year, in the race’s 80th running. It was a really chilly morning, and I was happy […]

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I don’t know how much I really changed my pacing for this distance as opposed to the 5Ks I’ve been running, but it was nice to have a bit of a change. The most memorable part of the race for me were the folks by the side of the course, cheering us on and offering […]

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Columbia, another little Connecticut town I’d never been to, home to a race with a slightly different setup than most: the first half was fairly straight downhill, and the course then doubled back and had us running back uphill the same way, which you knew was coming all along. Not exactly fun, but I managed […]

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Everyone came along for this one, a big event on a nice day, not too far away in Guilford. My parents were visiting, and the girls ran the fun run, which was big enough to actually have two separate events: a shorter one which Lucy ran and a bigger loop which Grace did. The 5K […]

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A pretty drizzly day, and a race in a town that didn’t seem that far away on the map, but ended up taking a long time to get to, simply because of the geography and the road system around this part of the state. I wondered if anyone else was going to show up, and […]

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With everyone else away, I had the opportunity to tackle two first-time races this weekend. In Danbury, where I’d only ever been for a postcard show almost 20 years ago, I ran the Spirit of Danbury 5K. It was another small race, just over 50 runners, and I found myself running near the front in […]

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I’ve been to the movies in Waterbury, but that’s about it. It’s a big enough place that probably has a lot of races, so I was one of the only 169ers there today, for a small but very well-run race. Most races have a sort of connection between the size of the field and the […]

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Some towns are known as “elusive” in the parlance of the group, if they host only one race a year, but from what I gather, Bethany is more than elusive, having not hosted a race for years. The group itself was behind the race, a Friday night event populated almost completely by club members, many […]

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