Thousands Run Through New Haven

Roughly 5,300 runners — including 1,100 from across the 50 states, more than 1,000 from the Elm City itself — gathered in slightly overcast but perfect, cool running weather Monday morning to participate in one of the city’s great multi-generational, all-sectors-of-society-participating events.

That was the 48th annual Faxon Law New Haven Road Race, which saw runners compete in a little kids’ run, a 5K, a half marathon, and a national championship race at the 20K — or 12.4‑mile — distance.

The reigning national 20K champion, and an Olympian, Conner Mantz, shaved seven seconds off his record to prevail handily in Monday’s race in 56:16, while fellow Olympian Hillary Bor placed second at 56:32 and Aubrey Frentheway was the first woman across the finish line at 1:05:36.

Click here on the Race site for all the runners’ results in all the races and their finishing times.

Long-time race director John Bysiewicz said he had been looking forward to another first this year — a New Haven native son, Travis Martin, who has recently set the 5,000-meter record at UCONN — to finish perhaps in the first five. Martin, who attended Common Ground High School and who ran for Wilbur Cross because Common Ground had no track team of its own, in fact finished the race 17^th, at 59:14.

Now in a master’s degree program in social work at UCONN, where he runs and trains, Martin said he was pleased enough with his under-an-hour finish and called the 20K race, his first at the distance, lots of fun in no small part because of all the hometown cheering crowds and also because the course runs right by his house.

As he decompressed with parents, friends, and admirers he added that it was also inspiring, if not a little dazzling, just ​“to be on the starting line with Olympic medalists!” 

Martin’s going to continue his highly disciplined training, he said, with careful sleeping and eating regimens — his Common Ground High School experiences, with their emphasis particularly on sustainability, are very much with him — as he prepares for upcoming U.S. national competitions and Olympic trials.

Martin said he himself might have finished sooner but that the ​“field was loaded” with world-class runners, the weather was ideal, and both those factors resulted in what he called ​“less variability” in the results.

The field in each race was also ​“loaded” as it always is with other remarkable human and family and generational stories. You could see blind runners finishing along side their running partners, and Jason Kline, of Hamden, finishing the 5K pushing his eight-month-old and four-year-old, both in the stroller. Kline said his older child also finished her own kid half-mile race. In the stroller, she called up to him, ​“Go faster, daddy, faster.”

Nearby, Bronx lawyer Eric Seiff was taking a few panting breaths after he finished his 5K at 50:21 and expressing disappointment, even though he’s 92 years old! ​“I haven’t grown up,” he said. ​“I still care about the time. I still run three and half to four miles a day. Running keeps me alive.”

He said he got hooked on the sport running his first races in the 1940s and then first in New Haven in 1951 as a freshman on the Yale cross country team.

He himself expressed no opinion about the controversy about Avelo, which has faced widespread community pushback for its participation in the Trump administration’s deportation flights.

While he saw in general no serious signs displayed about that issue among the runners (nor did this reporter), Seiff reported he had noticed a handful of runners’ bibs festooned with ​“AVELO” with a line crossed through the lettering.

The Race’s glory is obviously that it is not political but, to use Bysiewicz’s phrase, ​“a world class civic and athletic event.”

Part of that world-class-civic quality — at least in this writer’s opinion — is both how the Race’s leadership voted to turn down a $5,000 sponsorship gift and also the reaction.

“There are always two sides to everything, but the responses [to our decision] were very much more positive than negative in turning away their dollars.”

Bysiewicz reported that to make up the funds, Community Foundation for Greater New Haven was the first to step in, specifically, with funds earmarked to fill the breach.

Then came contributions from Groundworks ​“and a bunch of smaller sponsors, including a gift from Breeze [Airlines] so the business community helped us make it up. Avelo had been a three-year sponsor,” Bysiewicz added, at larger amounts. ​“They were loyal to us, but we decided their actions and what they were doing didn’t fit with our mission.”

Prompted by this reporter’s asking, some runners offered disparate takes on the Road Race’s decision to reject Avelo’s $5,000, in solidarity with local immigrant rights groups who had lobbied the leadership of the Race to do so.

“It’s stupid to oppose Avelo Airlines because they’re working with the administration to uphold the law,” 79-year-old Steve Praskievicz said.

Former Mayor John DeStefano offered a kind of opinion in the middle, with some nuance: ​“Yes, not taking it [the funding] makes sense for the race. But Avelo is an employer, for the city and region, and the level of engagement,” he averred, ​“should have been on the corporate, larger issues.

“I mean protecting the immigrant community, yes, that’s good for the race. But they’re suffering [out there, on the East Shore] from [the airplane] fumes. And they have agreements there, and they should enforce them too. It’s a broader issue.”

Anyway, he was there, exulting in the multi-generational joy of the moment, in shaking hands with old friends, but most especially in supervising his three grandkids, Eleanor, Josephine, and William, as they got in position for the Kids Fun Run.

“Me,” he said, ​“I’m just running for coffee.”

The start of the adult races was preceded by a remembrance of the Race’s long-time announcer Mark Gilhuly, who died of pancreatic cancer just a week after last year’s edition of the race.

Among the major beneficiaries of the Race were Project Purple, for the prevention of pancreatic cancer; New Haven Legal Assistance, the Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen, and IRIS.