Road Race Produces Numberless Pleasures

The 40th annual Faxon Law New Haven Road Race Monday produced its share of stats: 6,500 participants, the elite winners’ times, 2,500 kosher hot dogs purveyed, 1,470 gallons of water served, and 92-year-old Ed Regner’s finishing time of 57.20 in the 5K …

Yet at least one numbers guy, Jay Johnson, a chief financial officer running his fourth 20K, took this approach: ​“When I run, I ignore numbers.”

Johnson, who’s 50, ran for the pleasure of it and to keep in shape. He was among the thousands competing in a 5K, a half marathon, a kids’ half mile, and the nationally ranked 20K on a gloriously bright and cool post-rainy-weekend Monday morning.

Johnson said he takes the train every day from Fairfield to his sitting-on-your-chair office job in New York. So running, which he took up ten years ago, is a lot about keeping in shape. ​“I’m slowing down and I’m OK with it,” he said, although he did offer a general number that he’d like to finish in two hours.

On further discussion of the numbers, Johnson said to prepare for the race he ran a nine-mile course two or three times in the week leading up to Monday’s event.

When a reporter asked him about the additional mileage he’d have to run today competing in the 20K, which is 13.4 miles, he answered in a highly un-CFO-like manner: ​“If you can do 80 percent, you can do it all.”

Galen Rupp won the 20K race, in 59 minutes and 10 seconds. The first and fastest woman in the 20K, Jordan Hasay, finished in an hour and six seconds. Like her male counterpart, Rupp, who also won the race last year, Hasey trains in the Northwest, making it a kind of Oregon sweep for the day.

The second0place woman runner was Aliphine Tuliamuk, who won the New Haven event last year.

In the 5K, an increasingly popular event with more women than men participating this year, Patrick Dooley from Brooklyn won in 15:17, at a blistering 4:56 per mile pace.

A first-year math teacher at Choate Rosemary Hall School in Wallingford, Laney Tenford, came in first for the women at 18:27.

Another runner for whom the numbers were not all that important in the race, although he is competitive, was 26-year-old software designer Kyle Steger, from Stamford.

As he stretched and waited on Elm Street, between College and Temple, where his half marathon (13.1 mile) race was about to begin, Steger said he’s been running for a only year. This was his first time at the Faxon New Haven Road Race.

Describing himself as a competitive guy, he said that while he could not run with the elite athletes, his strategy was to get out of the pack relatively early and to run at a 6:30 pace per mile.

He had another goal, related less to the numbers than to, well, love.

Turns out the reason Steger became involved in running was romance. ​“A girl I was dating got me interested in running,” he said.

When I pointed out the past tense, ​“was,” he confirmed she is no longer the girlfriend.

However Steger confirmed that the ex-girlfriend was also running in Monday’s race.

“But she won’t pass me,” he declared.

Results in that particular competition were not available by press time, and may never be available to the general public.

Meanwhile, hundreds of the runners, after they checked their numbers posted on the brick facade of Center Church, went off to enjoy brews, yogurt, baguettes, apples, and kosher hot dogs, provided by the New Haven Parking Authority and expertly bunned by, among others, the Rev. Kevin Ewing and New Haven transit chief Doug Hausladen.

Heard anonymously by the hot dog tent: ​“Ten o’clock in the morning hot dogs and beer. It doesn’t get better, and it’s legal.”

The full results and stats galore are available on the Faxon Law New Haven Road Race website.