5,000 Run Across New Haven

Holding up her political sign may have cost East Rocker Kiara Matos a few minutes’ time in her 5K race. It was even all right if the announcer mistakenly called out that Nicolas Maduro, and not Matos, was crossing the finish line. 

It was all good because Matos could use Monday morning’s 47^th annual Faxon Law New Haven Road Race in part to publicize her ardent opposition to Venezuela’s president — as she joined 5,000 fellow runners as part of the city’s Labor Day athletic tradition.

When long-time local attorney Jim Segaloff, a spectator, saw Matos, whom he did not know, he felt compelled to go up to her. ​“Good for you,” he said, ​“this is another dictator that needs to go.”

That was one of the many personal and community stories unfolding beneath a festive cerulean sky as 5,000 runners and an equal number of spectators and volunteers, according to race officials, converged on the New Haven Green. 

The occasion was an event that long-time organizer John Bysiewicz calls not only a race but also a deeply moving and important community experience where the whole city feels like one extended family

Winners of the longest running national championship USATF 20K race – the key event of Monday’s proceedings — were, for the men, 2016 Olympian (in the steeplechase) Hillary Bor at 58:09; and for women, Keira D’Amato, at 1:06:24.

D’Amato is also the Faxon Law New Haven Road Race 20K record holder, at the 2022 race, and a former American marathon record holder.

For the day’s 5K race, the champs were Colin Slavin, at 15:31 and, for women, Courtney Kitchen at 17:15. For a full record of participants’ times, click here.

For Lily Ardito, captain of the North Branford High School varsity field hockey team, the race has been ​“a way to focus on bonding.” Team members are not permitted, she said, to drive alone to the race, and must carpool, in part, to get to know each other better. They take team photos on the Green, eat together afterwards, and kick off the athletic year with team-building in the context of New Haven’s Labor Day road race.

For the seven ​“streakers” like Rick Conte, Charles Matassa, Walter Messersmith, Pete Sanchez, James McCormack, Mark Martin, and Stephen Praskievicz, that rare club of seven who have run the 20K or half marathon every Labor Day since the inception 47 years ago, the race is both a reunion and a reflection of what Sanchez termed ​“a lifelong commitment to fitness.”

“The camaraderie is also great,” said Messersmith, and even the faces you see and recognize only fleetingly are moving, he added.

The Falmouth, Massachusetts road race is more venerable by a few years, reported Bysiewicz, ​“but we have more who have run every race.”

Another measure of how deep the race runs for participants, volunteers and families: ​“I’ve been to three streakers’ wakes,” Bysiewicz reported, and three others have incorporated their [bib] numbers into their marriage ceremonies, he said.

Two other aspects of the race’s community reach that are relatively unknown are the scholarships and the annual essays. This year race organizers awarded thousands of dollars of scholarship money to six college-bound high school athletes, two each from Wilbur Cross, James Hillhouse, and Career High Schools.

And the essays, which you can read in their entirety here, also indicate that for hundreds or even thousands of people over the decades, the event is a focal point of the year as well as a dive into city and personal history. 

For example, ​“I know for myself,” writes this year’s first place winner Matt Fischer, ​“that I only missed [running] one year since 2002, and it felt like missing out on the Super Bowl.”

“Since I was born and brought up in New Haven,” writes Donna Cramond, ​“I continue the tradition running the 20K. Passing Goffe Street, I recall where my aunt had a pie shop when she first immigrated here from Italy. Memories continue, passing streets like Orange Street, where my mom worked for Western Union for 30 years.”

Finally, another essayist, Sue Mayer, wrote, “ … I ran as a single person, a young bride, and a new mother of three. I ran with my little ones, through a divorce, a breast cancer diagnosis, and had a chance to run the race with my daughter when she was a PhD student at Yale. I got a concussion running the virtual 5K during the pandemic and this year I will run to celebrate turning 60.”

If there was a less than upbeat moment at Monday’s running proceedings it was the news that the long-time announcer of the race, and in many ways the ​“voice” of the event, Mark Gilhuly, would not be in his usual seat belting out, ​“Looking good, you can do it!” at the finish line. He’s fighting pancreatic cancer, and the hope is he’ll be back next year.