With the kids off bowling, my mom accompanied me to my fifty-first race, not far from Hartford, about an hour from home. It was a benefit for the local high school track team, and the course was the team’s 5K course, around the baseball field and across fields and forests behind the school. It was […]

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This was a nice course, a big squarish loop around the town, with maybe 150 runners participating. It was a four miler, so I naturally lost a bit in the final mile and came in just barely over 30 minutes. It was a warm day (I am looking pretty beat in this photo) but Killingworth […]

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I’m whittling down the list of towns within a half hour or so where I haven’t yet run a race. I know it’s going to make finishing out the map tougher later on, but it’s hard to resist knocking them off now, when I need a quick race to do and not take all day […]

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Some town races are more memorable than others, and this one, the 52nd annual Firecracker 8K in Bethel on the Fourth of July, was one that will stick in my mind. First of all, it started right downtown, with no giant high school or empty field parking lot; as far as I can tell, people […]

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Part of the Hartford Marathon family of races, this early morning trail run seemed like a good idea at the time. I had the choice of a 3.3 or 5.5 mile race, and chose the shorter, as I thought I’d give myself a break and also perhaps try for a second race later in the […]

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This race in Norwalk was another example of one of those race series that has a strong local following, with most people there running this as part of a progressive distance six-race series over the course of the summer. It was a nice residential course, and I felt pretty good, but it’s always humbling how […]

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169 towns, 169 different styles and sizes… This race had the organizational footprint of a small marathon. Uniformed staff directing traffic in the parking area, paperless registration, with eight staffers and laptops for race day registration (credit cards accepted), separate tents for each fundraising team, a giant breakfast area, a person in a Vineyard Vines […]

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After Grace’s 5K last month, Lucy had really been looking forward to a fun run, and this race, which billed itself as a “Festival of Running,” fit the bill perfectly. I started off with the 5K, which was actually just three loops around the Durham fairgrounds, a little boring but pretty fast. Next up was […]

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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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