I headed out early on Halloween morning to reach Ellington, an “elusive” town on the opposite end of the state. It was a chilly morning when I arrived, but it warmed up enough for me to leave behind the long sleeve shirt I’d brought. The race started a bit of the middle of nowhere on […]

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Grace’s growing Beatles obsession has spawned many conversations (“Who died first?” “Where is Paul right now?”), including ones about what Paul and Ringo are up to these days. Especially since I went to see Paul in Albany last summer, Grace’s interest in actually seeing one of the real Beatles has been on the rise, and […]

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We took a family trip to the very nearby Beacon Falls (or more accurately, to the parking lot at the high school in Beacon Falls), where the girls enjoyed the complimentary capes, pre-race Zumba routines, and a kids craft table. There was a pretty big 169 contingent today, and I enjoyed the run, despite the […]

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Feeling rejuvenated and possibly on my way to being healed after a month off and some physical therapy, I decided to take on another race this weekend, just up the Route 8 corridor (a drive I’m getting to know well) a half an hour away in Middlebury. It’s a picturesque little town I haven’t visited […]

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We hadn’t yet moved to Woodbridge in time for the 2013 Bagel Run, and I was out of town or out of commission for the 2014 edition, so I was more than ready to check off this easiest of towns this time around. It was a low-stakes way to try my first back-to-back races on […]

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The best part of the 169 Towns website is the giant spreadsheet of upcoming races, and towns without frequent races are labeled “elusive.” I hadn’t hit one of these town yet, so I thought I’d hit Deep River, a town whose name I don’t think I’d ever heard, this weekend. It was just past the […]

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Over the years, I’ve slowly and steadily chipped away at a long mental to-do list made up of concerts by bands I grew up in Alaska loving, but never had a chance to see live. The Pixies were probably the biggest catch on that last, and their now-endless reunion tour gave me ample opportunity to […]

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I spent the six weeks after the Somers race trying to take it easy. I didn’t run, but we did walk a lot in Ireland, and I didn’t lay off quite as much as I would like to have, but that’s life. By the time September rolled around, I was getting a little antsy. I’d […]

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I’ve always enjoyed the extra challenge of a trail race, and some of my favorite races were the annual trail races I ran in California as part of the Xterra series. I ran the Leatherman’s Loop in April, but I had yet to run a trail race in Connecticut. I read about a race called […]

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Another weekend, another race, right? These towns aren’t going to run themselves… A quick scan of the spreadsheet of Connecticut races on the group’s website yielded a hit in Plainville, about a 40 minute drive up Rt. 8. I’d never been there, or really heard of the place, but when I arrived, it was clear […]

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After Milford, I felt like I was on a roll. Another weekend? I’ll try another race, this one in a town I’d never visited before, New London. The start and finish were in the picturesque center of town, with great old buildings and the war memorial. You can never really tell with the added population […]

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After seeing a number of “Run 169 Towns” shirts at Mt. Washington, I checked up on the group and thought it would be a fun thing to do. This race on the fourth of July was the first one nearby in a town I’d never run before, so we all headed over to Milford to […]

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After running my first Mt. Washington Road Race on the 21st, I thought I’d try to keep things going and sign up for a local 5K later on in the month. I’d never been to Derby, though it’s not far from Woodbridge, and we were free that weekend, so it fit the bill. It was […]

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I remember this race mostly because it was the occasion of Grace’s first fun run. She ran with me around the track at Cheshire High School, mostly recovered from her traumatic run-in with the costumed mascot, and got a giant t-shirt to remember it by. For my part, it was an uneventful, fairly sluggish 5K, […]

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Preparing for the start of the Mt. Washington Road Race this weekend, I saw a number of runners with nice-looking shirts featuring the outline of the state of Connecticut, silhouettes of runners, and the words “RUN 169 TOWNS, DEBTICONN.ORG” I looked up the address when I got home, and discovered wonderfully ramshackle website for the […]

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