12 ​“Streakers” Prep For 39th Road Race

When New Haven hosts its 39th annual 20K Labor Day Race Monday, Charles Matassa will be at the starting line — as he has since the jam-packed event began. He’ll have company in the form of fellow ​“Streakers” who help each complete the race, even if they’re in a wheelchair.

Matassa is a member of 12 remaining Streakers, 12 runners who have been in the 20K race consecutively for the institution’s full 39 years.

At 60, Matassa is the youngest of the Streakers. ​“We’re all holding out to be the last one,” he said.

Four races in all take place Monday, including a kids’ ​“fun run,” a 5K, the 20K, and a new half marathon, in what is now officially called The Faxon Law New Haven Road Race. Six to seven thousand runners in all are expectedClick here for the schedule.

Matassa and another Streaker, recently retired New Haven firefighter Rick Conte, met up this week in front of Trailblazers on Elm Street with a dozen other race participants for a six-mile practice run.

As they stretched — or didn’t stretch, which was Matassa’s approach — they reminisced about the 38 consecutive races they’d been in, their status as impressive runners who’ve never missed a race, a great streak, and what keeps them going.

“Streaking,” for those old enough to recall, was a 1970s phenomenon in which pranksters who sprinted naked in public. Race Coordinator John Bysiewicz — himself a streaker (never-miss) of a coordinator — had fun punning on that term when he created the group after, Matassa guesstimated, the 20th year of the race.

Matassa and Conte both decided to run an even longer race this year and begin a new tradition. The 20K, which they’ve both run for 38 years, is 12.4 miles. A half marathon has been added this year. Both men decided to sign up for it, planning to run 13.1 miles, seven-tenths more than in the past.

“We get to keep the streak going,” said Matassa, because they get credit for the 20K.

They also try something new, and maybe start a new streak, added Conte.

Bysiewicz reported that the half marathon was added this year — along with a two-person half marathon relay — because it’s a more popular race. To run a half marathon is on a lot of people’s ​“bucket list.”

With more and more people over 40 entered into the race, it was time to offer a half marathon as an opportunity. As of Wednesday twice as many runners were signed up for the half marathon as the 20K.

Running Bug Strikes

Matassa, who retired recently as a fiscal and administrative officer with the state’s Department of Developmental Services, got the running bug just out of college when his belly became embarrassing to him. A friend introduced him to the pleasures of running.

He used to get the ​“runner’s high” in the early 20Ks that he ran, the feeling that he could just go on and run forever that kicks in after the first nine or ten miles. He no longer gets that high. His current goal is to finish healthy and in a respectable time, he said.

The ​“Streakers” are a loose brotherhood. It featured about 25 people back eight years ago, when the group was hailed and a page added in their honor to the New Haven Road Race’s website.

Now the group is down to about a dozen in this year’s edition of the race, with Matassa the youngest. Conte is 63. Both men are lithe and understatedly muscular. They are serious about maintaining a healthful diet and lifestyle.

Both men are quietly competitive, with themselves, said Conte.

“What I find remarkable still is how you can’t tell about people” by appearance at the race, Matass aobserved. ​“You’ll pass some high school kids who should be whupping you, and then you’re passed by some 70-year-old woman.”

The Streakers get together by and large only around the race and its special events during the year. When they run, there is a keen group sense. They help each other.

One year, for instance, they helped Peter Halsey keep his streak going. ​“I broke my pelvis three weeks before the race, so I did it in a wheelchair,” he recalled. ​“I started too fast and struggled at the end.” Complicating matters was his decision to ​“eat a huge pancake breakfast about an hour before the race.” He almost gave up, but his fellow streakers helped him make it past the finish line.

William Schaeffer had a similar experience in 2009. The race was just three weeks after he’d finished chemotherapy for bone cancer. Friends pre-staged energy drinks for him along the way because his doctor told him his immune system hadn’t recovered enough to drink what he termed ​“public water” from stations along the route.

“A fellow Streaker [Jim McCormack] ran with me the entire way. They sacrificed their time to help me complete the race,” Schaeffer recalled.

Matassa said he hopes to finish this 39th edition of the race in a respectable time by his lights, which would be over two hours, but not much. Conte said he’s aiming for two hours. Most of all, they plan to finish — and return a year later.