My first sight of bigtime road racers was on Memorial Day, 1972. Greenwich. My first road race and I turned out to be faster than I thought. Short course. Most vivid memory has to be watching Amby Burfoot and John Vitale warm up for the event. They ran ten miles before the five-mile competition. Can you imagine?

I couldn’t.

About the photo. I know, but Billy went to school in CT and it’s a great photo of Vitale. Props to Ray.

Runners Poised for Fall Races

By PETER GAMBACCINI  AUG. 28, 1977. New York Times

WESTPORT.  WHEN the Roadrunners program began here sixteen summers ago, organizers were happy to attract even 15 athletes to a weekly race. This summer 99 runners of all ages, shapes and sexes showed up for a 3.25‐mile jaunt at 8 A.M. on a Saturday. Last year, Westport’s Labor Day Ten‐miler, now one of the top road races in the East, drew 260 runners, more than three times the total of a decade before.

The running boom has hit Connecticut, and it has brought more women, children, masters — runners who are 40 and older — and athletes from other sports to the summer and fall circuit of road races that now stretches from Fairfield County to the Massachusetts and Rhode Island borders, and it has added new, unusual and challenging runs to that schedule.

The acceptance of the new events has been swift. Mystic stages a 5.2‐mile race, set for Oct. 9 this year. It drew 19 runners at its inauguration in 1975 and had a field of 120 competitors last year.

It is now possible to find at least one major running event each weekend in September and October in Connecticut, and there are often two to choose from on a single day.

Without fanfare, Connecticut has been producing some of the country’s top runners for many years. The best known is Frank Shorter, the 1972 Olympic marathon champion, who won his first national title (the N.C.A.A. six‐mile) while a senior at Yale.

Others are two Boston marathon winners, Mystic’s John Kelley (1957) and New London and Wesleyan’s Ambrose Burfoot (1969); Rocky Hill’s John Vitale, a nationally ranked marathoner; Westport’s Steve Wheeler, the state’s first under‐4:00 miler; Watertown’s Jan Merrill, an Olympian who has won several national championships for women, and Milford’s Bob Hensley, a 23-year‐old who could become the United States’ next world‐class marathoner.

Mr. Burfoot, Mr. Vitale and Mr. Hensley are all past winners of Westport’s Labor Day classic. Mr. Hensley, in fact, has won it the last four years and holds the race record of 51:53 for the 10.6‐mile course.

Westport’s Labor Day race is the culmination of a nine‐week series that begins with a 2.5‐mile run and lengthens each week.

“Just about every good distance runner from the high schools in Fairfield County has run in this series at one time,” said Laddie Lawrence, who organizes the races for the Westport Recreation Commission.

This year’s race is set for Sept. 5 and trophies will go to the top 10 runners, with medals for the next 15. There will also be trophies for the first three teenagers, Westporters, women, submasters (ages 30‐39) and masters.

The Westport race has traditionally started and ended at crowded midtown points, but the police are finding it increasingly hard to handle the throngs and the heavy traffic. This year, the race will be moved to the north end of town, beginning and ending at Staples High School.

Several of the other autumn road races are held in conjunction with local fairs. Ledyard’s 8.8‐mile race September 10 was first held in 1971 and is part of the Ledyard Fair.

Ledyard’s is a predominantly rural course. Trophies or engraved mugs will go to the overall winner and the top master, schoolboy and woman.

Kelley didn’t pass along a mantra or anything–he didn’t believe in simplistic approaches like that–but he was an Irish born storyteller and philosopher, and his big message way back in the mid-1960s was: We’re moving too fast; we need to remain more connected to simple values and nature; we might be a big-brained animal, but we’re still just an animal; we shouldn’t be polluting the planet; organic is the way to go; exercise is imperative, without it we shrivel and die; abhor the automobile; beware the military-industrial complex; don’t believe 99 percent of what big institutions tell you. It was pretty radical stuff back then.

Amby Burfoot, Athletics Illustrated, September 2011

Those who recover quickly from the Ledyard test can spend the next day running 4.4 miles in South Windsor, where a race is held annually as part of the Wapping Fair.

“Having it at a fair, the runners can bring their families, who can see them on the course for three‐quarters of a mile at the start and finish,” according to Tony Dennis, the race organizer.

In four divisions (open, junior, senior and women), the sponsoring fair committee and the South Windsor Jaycees give running shoes to the first finisher, a trophy to the runner‐up, and a ribbon to third place. Winners received Tiger shoes last year, but this year’s shoes will come from “whoever gives us the best deal,” according to Mr. Dennis. Eighty runners competed in South Windsor in 1976.

On the same day, there is a 10‐mile race for masters men and women only in Middletown. Middletown may have the most complete running program in Connecticut; weekly cross‐country races are summer features (as in Westport and Norwalk), along with weekly track meets (as in Westport and Greenwich).

There are major foot races of varying lengths throughout the year, including a marathon in March and a biathlon in early August. In the biathlon, competitors run three miles, then jump into a lake and swim half a mile. Bernie O’Rourke, Middletown’s Director of Parks and Recreation, remembers the year John Vitale “got an extra big lead, but he lost; he’s no swimmer.”

Guilford’s 10‐mile race on September 18 is part of the Guilford Fair and begins and ends at the fairgrounds. The race was initiated last year by Vic Altshul, who says, “I developed the race because I love running and I love Guilford and I thought I ought to get the two together.”

Although he is an active runner, Mr. Altshul forgoes competition in this 10-miler.

“I get too nervous,” he says.” I stay in the pace car and see there are no foulups.”

The start and finish of the Guilford race are past lovely white‐framed saltbox colonial streets. Three trophies are awarded in the open, masters, senior, women, and junior divisions, with one award each for the top Guilford runner and the oldest and youngest competitors — ages sixty-two and eight a year ago. Mr. Altshul hopes to double last year’s field of 142 entrants.

October begins with Bristol’s eight-miler on Oct. 2, called the Mumathon. The race is part of Bristol’s annual chrysanthemum festival, with parades, shows and mum‐covered floats. In its fifth year, the race drew a field of 160 in 1976.

On October 9, a runner can choose between Mystic’s 5.2‐mile route and a 6.6-mile trek through Shenipsit State Forest in Stafford.

The ubiquitous Mr. Burfoot was first in Mystic last year, where the course has one long stretch along the scenic Mystic River and another two‐mile uphill portion in the middle.

The Shenipsit course is “one of the prettiest and toughest in the state,” according to Gerald Stage of the sponsoring Shenipsit Striders.

On paved roads, dirt paths and logging trails, runners actually ascend to the top of the 1,000‐foot Soapstone Mountain, and the last half‐mile, which is all downhill, is “conducive to a good, fast competitive finish, but they’ve been thoroughly tested,” according to Mr. Stage.

The course goes through the towns of Stafford, Somers and Ellington at the height of the fall foliage. The Shenipsit Striders are a hearty lot who have “runs for fun” every Saturday at 7:30 A.M., twelve months a year. The exhilaration of running and the beauty of the forest are “too good a thing not to share,” Mr. Stage says.

Stamford has held a 5.8‐mile race on Columbus Day, October 12, since 1969. It is a generally flat route that begins at Rippowam High School; 150 competed last year.

Milford has an Oct. 15 seven‐mile run on country roads and rolling hills that gives “a very good view of the autumn foliage,” according to Bob Hensley, who organizes the race. Mr. Hensley, a Milford Recreation Department employee, has made a habit of winning Westport’s Labor Day event by dogging the heels of the leader and sprinting away in the last mile. Cadet Curt Alitz of West Point, a top Eastern collegian, was his opponent last year.

Hensley does not expect to be able to defend his title this year. He has been invited to a marathon in Eugene, Ore., the following week and does not want a tough race such a short time beforehand. Many of the country’s top runners are competing in the Oregon marathon.

Mr. Hensley regrets he will probably miss the Westport race, which he considers “the biggest, the most prestigious” on Connecticut’s fall schedule. Is Connecticut’s level of competition good preparation for him?

“Just barely,” he concedes. “It’s right at my stretching point. If you’re way over your head or under your level, you don’t put out 100 percent.”

Actually, Connecticut’s crowded running agenda now has something for every kind of participant. The schedule is congenial for a star like Stamford’s Bruce Merrill. Last year, the 23‐year-old graduate of Bates College won Westport’s Saturday race at 8 A.M. and drove to neighboring Norwalk to win at 11 A.M. there.

It is excellent for a first‐class masters runners like 55‐year‐old Jack Kavanah of Westport, who leaves younger men behind with times like 30 minutes 50 seconds for five miles.

And it even has something for those who slog along at eight or 10 minutes to the mile. The fields are getting bigger every day, and any runner is sure to find someone cruising along at his speed, whatever it may be. ■

Shout out to Charlie Robbins, whose example I still recall.

He was old and he was fast and I wanted to be just like him.

Well, I’m old.