As marathons go, Hartford is just okay. It’s not the best, it’s not the worst. There were a few good things, a few not-so-good things. Overall, just kind of so-so. Which, I guess, is better than truly horrible. I just wasn’t in love with it, if you know what I mean.
I was also expecting that I would be able to run it a little faster than I did, but I swear I am not letting that affect my judgment.
A Long Weekend of Driving
Tommy came along and we drove out to Hartford. As it happened, my van was rear-ended a couple of weeks before, and while it was in the shop I was driving a Town & Country rental with unlimited mileage. So we were able to drive out in that thing and not put the mileage on one of our own cars. It’s not fun to drive in any way, shape or form, but was free. Except for the gas that it sucked down. Wow, it’s a guzzler. And that is just one of its faults, but don’t get me started.
For the race, we stayed at the Residence Inn in Rocky Hill, which is a suburb southwest of Hartford. We stayed there because I waited too long to make a hotel reservation downtown---who knew that everything for race weekend would book up two months in advance?---and also because Tommy could use a corporate discount. It was not much of a drive into town, and it was nice to have a kitchen.
On the way to the Hartford, we spent Thursday night at a Holiday Inn Express in Clearfield, PA (because I had a free night). On the return trip, we first drove up to Boston to see Susan and Ross, and then headed back via New York State (Tommy had business outside Syracuse). We spent Sunday night in Springfield, MA, and Monday night in Erie, PA, staying at Red Roofs. It is pretty weird to stay at a Red Roof without any dogs. Especially when there is a dog show in the town, as happened to be the case in Springfield!
Yeah, pretty much it would have been better if I had flown. We tried to break it up, but it was a lot of hours in the car. A car that I hated. But I digress.
Race Expo (and Pasta Dinner We Missed)
Even though we certainly didn’t linger in Clearfield, PA on Friday morning, it still took us until almost 4 pm to reach Hartford. It took us awhile, driving around in Friday afternoon downtown Hartford traffic---not that bad, except when you don’t know the area at all---to figure out where to park for the expo. The expo was in the XL Center, and we ended up in the garage across the street.
I had purchased tickets for the 5 pm seating of the pasta dinner. So now I was stressing out because I wanted to pick up my race packet and have a chance to thoroughly shop the expo before dinner.
Who am I kidding? I had been stressing out for probably two hours before we got to Hartford, worrying if we were going to make it on time.
Packet pickup was quick, albeit a bit confusing. The confusion kind of set the tone for the activities surrounding the race. Basically, there really was not a lot of direction or signage. And I guess I am old fashioned, but I really like to get printed instructions ahead of time. There was a little bit of info on the website, but not enough so that even if you printed it out would you have a truly clear idea about what was where. Maybe if you lived in Hartford and had done the race before it was enough. But not for somebody visiting for the first time.
I know this is also partly my fault because I’ve gotten kind of sloppy abut reading the directions at these races. After so many races in so many places, I guess I just assume that I’ll get there and figure it out.
Well, maybe it also would have helped if their race website was a little easier to navigate, and if they had sent out some detailed info via email, the way many other races do. They sent info, but not enough. And their website sucks---too much focus on their foundation and the charities, and not enough on the race.
So, I walked up to the first table and got my bib. That was it, just the bib. No bag to put it in. No goodies. No directions about where to go next. I noticed there was a little box of pins on the table but I didn’t bother to pick them up because I had packed extras, and I also assumed that at some point I would get a bag and maybe there would be pins in there.
I had to ask the volunteer about where to go next. If I had not asked, apparently she would not have said anything. She also did not say anything about the pins. I know I have complained about volunteers who are a little too explicit about exactly what the pins are for and how they should be used, but this was kind of the opposite. I would reflect on this later, and observe the results of her reticence while I waited for the race to begin the next morning (when random strangers kept asking me if I knew where they could find some pins).
I asked the volunteer about the location of the pasta dinner. She had no information.
So, it turns out that the next place I go is a table around the corner, where I get my shirt (long sleeved, technical, not bad) and a little orange sack designed like a backpack and made out of that material like you find in the reusable grocery bags. Turns out that does not work very well when you try to turn it into a backpack. It falls apart really fast. So, the result is you are going to throw it away, maybe even sooner than if it were an actual plastic bag! What is so green about that, I wonder?
There is nothing in this bag. It is not secure enough to use as a gear check bag, and it is kind of awkward to put your expo purchases in. I am not a fan of this bag.
I figure out the timing chip is already attached to the back of my race number, so we don’t have to pick up the chip.
I asked the volunteer at the shirt table about the location of the pasta dinner. He had no information.
We found a booth labeled “Information.” There was a large course map on display and a volunteer was going over that with some people. There was another volunteer standing around, so we asked him about the location of the pasta dinner. He did not have any information, and he was kind of rude about it.
I was getting hungry at this point. But we decided to put aside all thoughts of the pasta dinner, and do a quick walkthrough of the expo.
One thing I did like at Hartford was that you were able to pick up your packet (such as it was) before going through the expo. That is one thing that I really dislike about the Flying Pig.
The expo was about the size of the one at Flying Pig, maybe a little smaller. Hartford gets about 14,000 participants across all the events (half-marathon, relay, marathon) so that’s about right. They had a good selection of vendors. I ended up buying a couple of cute tee shirts (one technical, one cotton) with a dog-related theme (dog holding a race number that says 26.2 and the shirt says Marathon Dog).
There was an area selling Hartford Marathon logo wear, and I probably would have bought a hat or something, but they were a little overpriced for the lack of quality.
At this point we were expo’d out, and I was even hungrier, so we decided to try a little harder to locate the pasta dinner. On the way out of the expo I stopped at what appeared to be the “Trouble” desk. Somebody there was able to explain to us that the pasta dinner was located in Bushnell Park, about a half mile away from the expo.
Bushnell Park was also the start/finish area of the marathon. We had passed by it on our way to the XL Center. But now it was raining outside, and we were loath to move the car to another location more convenient to the park in the middle of rush hour on a Friday.
So we gave up on the pasta dinner for which I had stupidly paid in advance. It was windy and cold and rainy and miserable, so even if it were right next door to the expo the idea of sitting outside (under tents, but still) and eating pasta cooked for hundreds of people was not very appealing.
We drove to our hotel, checked in, and headed out to find an Italian restaurant nearby with the help of the GPS. Which turned out to be more difficult than you would think, since all the Italian places it could find seemed to be out of business. After a bit of driving around, we did locate a newish place not too far from the hotel, called Pazzo Cafe. Although the parking lot was full, we were seated right away. Décor was that trendy, casual, open kitchen, wood fired pizza oven kind of thing. Excellent bread. Decent wine list. Large portions. I had cavatappi with an eggplant sauce. I forget what Tommy had. Pizza? That’s right. This place also had an amazing selection of wonderful gelatos. I had two scoops for dessert, one scoop of chocolate and one scoop of mint chocolate chip. Tommy a piece of carrot cake, which I ended up having some of later back at the hotel. We agreed it was maybe the best carrot cake we had ever had in our lives.
The portions were so large, that we could take the leftovers back to the hotel with us, which worked out great for me after the race. I didn’t need my turkey sandwich when I could eat all the leftover pasta and pizza.
Getting to the Start
The morning was relatively stress-free for an out of town race with limited information. I was up early for my pre-race coffee and yogurt. The traffic getting back downtown was not bad at all on Saturday morning, and the highway seemed to dump us out right at Bushnell Park.
I got out of the car and left Tommy to go look for parking on his own. We agreed to meet after the race at the supposedly designated family reunion area, wherever that was. They said they had one.
It was a lovely morning in Bushnell Park, but the grass was soaked from the rain the day before. I got on the portapotty line, which was already rather long. Worse, as I approached the front of the line, I could see that the area directly in front of the portapotties was basically a mud pit. At least, I hoped that was mud. It was pretty disgusting. So, as you went in and out of the portapotty, you ended up with shoes that were covered in mud. Not the best way to start the race, I thought. Should have brought plastic bags to put on my shoes. Oh well.
After the portapotty stop, I walked around the little marathon village they had set up. There were a lot of tents and vendors, but no signage telling you which way to go to the start or providing any sort of useful information. Periodically, a guy on a loudspeaker would announce that the gear check area was in front of Bushnell Theater, but who knew where that was if you didn’t live in Hartford?
It was still early. I noticed that the booth for Dick’s Sporting Goods was unoccupied, so after making a pass around the village (picked up a little tube of free sunscreen, which did prove useful), I sat down in one of the chairs.
Almost as soon as I sat down, people started coming up to me and asking me questions:
Which way is the volunteer check in? Where is the gear check? Do you know where the kids’ fun run starts? And my favorite question, do you know where I can get some pins?
I had passed the volunteer check-in so I could actually help out with that one. In exchange, I asked people if they could tell me where the start line was, but nobody knew.
An official-looking guy dressed in a business suit came over, and I thought he was going to tell me I had to move. But no, he just was looking for the volunteer check-in. I pointed him in the right direction.
It was all pretty funny.
So I stayed seated there until about 15 minutes before the race was to begin, when I followed a growing wave of foot traffic in a direction that I hoped would lead to the starting line. This it did. And I also now knew where the Bushnell Theater was, but I wasn’t checking any gear.
Next point of confusion: I looked around for the pace signs to try to figure out a good place to line up. Then I noticed that all of the pace team leaders were hanging out together in front of the theater (I never did see any of them during the actual race, which was a little strange). So that was not very helpful. I found some people who looked like they were as slow as I was. I started chatting with a guy who told me that yeah, this was where all the over 10 minutes a mile people were, so it was the right place.
One nice thing at the start was that they had a big video display that was right in front of where I was standing, so I could see the people making the announcements (even though they still weren’t all that intelligible) and the woman who sang The Star Spangled Banner. They also showed a little video about selected people and their marathon “stories” but I didn’t pay much attention to that.
The Race
And soon, we were off. Overall, I’d have to say that it was not the most scenic or interesting urban marathon I’ve ever run. Also, it was not the most well-designed.Lots of turns, and retracing of steps. It was mostly flat, with a few hills provided by overpasses, and also by getting up and down from the riverfront. I know there are some pretty neighborhoods in Hartford (saw them later when driving around) but for some reason the course did not take us through them. It was a combination of boring downtown, industrial area, riverfront bike trail, and one somewhat upscale neighborhood in which we went down and back (and one much sketchier ‘hood that we went through on the way back).
There’s not a lot that is very interesting along the way. The aid stations are well-organized and well-staffed. There were occasional spots with live or recorded music, including a couple of bagpipers. Not too much crowd support. Not the worst race, but not the best, either. Just kind of ho-hum. Won’t make my list of favorites. It was just okay.
There were a lot of Maniacs and Fifty Staters. This is a big race weekend in New England, and there were several possibilities to complete a “double” by running Hartford on Saturday and then Mt. Desert Island (Maine) or Breakers (Rhode Island) on Sunday. There was one woman who was just in front of me for the first few miles who was wearing a sign on her back stating her intentions to finish Hartford and Breakers that weekend. I was glad that I had decided not to try that myself. It also made me feel good to eventually pass her. Would have been more demoralizing if she had easily pulled ahead of me. I’m just not ready for a double.
The first couple miles basically serve to get you out of the downtown area and into a combination of industrial areas and a riverside park. I know Hartford probably wants us to remember the park but unfortunately there was a lot of industry in there, too. I missed the first mile marker, but reached mile 2 in 19:58.
By the start of the third mile we had turned onto a paved path that runs along the Connecticut River. Mile 3 took me 9:56. I decided that I needed another portapotty visit. This hasn’t happened to me in quite awhile during a marathon so I must have been overhydrated or something. Anyway, just as we were leaving the industrial area and heading onto the bike path, I noticed a couple of portapotties on the side, off of the trail. I’m not even sure if they were actually associated with the race, but there was no line so I went in. This cost me a minute but it was worth it for the comfort factor. Mile 4 was 11:11.
I remember two things from mile 5, which took us back into downtown. First, there was some woman complaining to some guy that her GPS was a tenth of a mile off, and asking if he thought the course was measured wrong. I tried to explain to her that race courses are measured on the tangents, so unless she was always running the shortest tangent, every time we turned a corner she was adding distance. And we were turning a lot of corners. So really, a tenth of mile over five miles is not that bad. Anyway, she didn’t understand what I was trying to say. So I gave up.
Second thing is that I ran by Tommy, who lamely tried to take my picture but couldn’t figure out how to get the camera to work in time, so I just kept going because I was feeling good and didn’t want to stop.
Mile 5 was 10:04. I don’t remember too much about miles 6-11 (I am looking at the course map as I write this). My times were 10:02, 9:41, 9:52, 10:44, 10:06 and 10:02. I was having GU Chomps (Green Tea flavor) every four miles or so, and walking through the water stations. I guess some of this was along the river, and some of it was industrial. Nothing very memorable.
Around mile 11, we began a long out-and-back stretch that would take us through a neighborhood of large old homes. Even here, I was surprised that there were not more people out cheering. The Hartford Marathon is comparable in size to the Flying Pig in Cincinnati, and I was thinking about how much more interesting a course we have here, and how much louder the people cheer in Hyde Park Square. There was nothing like that in Hartford. In this neighborhood (whatever it is called) there were a few houses with parties going on out on the front lawns, but there were many empty spots as well.
The cool thing about the out-and-back was that it gave me an opportunity to see the fast runners on their way back (mile 23 is near mile 11). I saw the two Kenyan guys who would finish first and second, followed by serial marathoner Michael Wardian (the previous year’s winner, a fellow Maniac who would go on to win Mt. Desert Island in Maine the very next day).
I was still feeling okay, and keeping a pretty even pace for miles 12-16 (10:05, 10:39, 10:09, 9:55, 10:18). I was looking forward to the turnaround at mile 17, when it looked like we would be headed downhill. Funny how when I run these out-and-back portions of a race, I always think it will be downhill on the way back. It’s just an optical illusion.
Mile 17 was 11:47, and I was starting to struggle a bit. And then I found out that we were not going downhill after all. And now, we were running into a headwind, which would be with us for the remainder of the race. At this point I started getting really bored with the race and just wanted it to be over, and I was again very glad that I did not have to get up and do the same thing tomorrow in a different city.
Mile 18 was 9:25 (perhaps mile 17 and 18 markers were in the wrong places), but after that I was struggling again. 10:49 for 19, 11:05 for 20, 22:30 for 21 and 22, 12:05 for 23.
I had kind of been hoping for a sub-4:30 time, but that was not happening now.
At mile 24, we headed back along the river trail and into downtown. Mile 24 was 11:57, mile 25 was 11:59, and mile 26 was 11:14. Saw Tommy, who took my picture, as I ran towards the finish line. We passed under that little stone archway thing that is part of the race logo and replicated in the design of the finisher’s medal, but I did not even notice at the time. 1:57 for the last .2 and I was glad to be done with it.
It has been bothering me that I did not know anything about what that stone archway was supposed to represent, so I looked it up online. It is called the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Arch, and it is in honor of the 4000 Hartford residents who served in the Civil War, and the 400 who died in Union uniforms. I never would have guessed that it was a war memorial. I am surprised that there is no info (or maybe I am not surprised considering the general dearth of info) about the arch on the race web site, since it is used as the race logo and therefore somewhat significant. Again, they seem to be assuming that the people who run this race are all from the Hartford area. Ha, and in truth is not really a race worth travelling for, after all.
So, that time put me 20 of 46 in my age group and 1557 of 2217 marathoners. I guess this race is a little smaller than the Flying Pig. I was disappointed that I didn’t finish any faster than at Leading Ladies, since I felt so good going into the race. But I guess the Leading Ladies course was faster than I realized. And, I had not expected to have so much trouble running into that headwind.
Post-Race
In addition to the traditional space blankets and the finisher’s medal (which is rather a nice one), they handed out reusable orange (the ING race sponsor color) water bottles at the finish line embossed with the race logo and the word “Finisher” on them. I thought that was a nice touch, but it would have been even nicer if they had rinsed the bottles out before filling them. Very strong taste of plastic in there. Had to dump it.
They also do a nice job with the food at the end of this race. There was a large tented area with a bigger variety of items than at most races. My favorite was the hot tomato and chicken soup with parmesan cheese. It was nice and salty and warm, just the perfect thing after an autumn race.
After getting some food, I was ready to find Tommy. Since he had been nearby when I crossed the finish line, I did not expect it to be too difficult to locate him. But what did present a challenge was finding the location of the reunion area where we had agreed to meet. I wandered around the park for a bit, asked various people for directions, and wasn’t having any luck. As I had noticed in the morning before the race, there were no signs anywhere, and nobody seemed to know where anything was---actually, I had a little trouble even finding my way to the food tent, to tell the truth.
Eventually, I found a volunteer who thought that he had seen some signage up on the street with alphabet letters (A-H, I-M, etc. that sort of thing) indicating it might be a reunion area. So I walked out of the park and toward that street, where I did find these signs. They weren’t very big. I stood on the sidewalk by the A-H sign. Nobody else was waiting there. I was getting cold. I walked up and down the street for a few minutes. I thought about how many people I had asked before I located the reunion area, and I thought about how unwilling Tommy was to ask for directions.
I wished I had carried a phone. I was just about to ask someone if I could borrow their phone to try to reach Tommy when he finally appeared.
The good news was that he had found a parking space that morning in the lot directly across the street from the park, so now that we were reunited, I did not have far to walk at all. We headed back to the hotel, where I feasted on our leftovers from the night before---no need of a turkey sandwich this time.
Hartford Touristing
We were lucky enough to get two of the last tickets for the last tour of the day---I had not realized that there were scheduled tour times and a limited number of tickets.
Ok, here is what I remember: Samuel Clemens moved to Hartford with his wife, Olivia. They rented a house in the Nook Farm neighborhood (a writer’s enclave, and I presume, the source of the name for the Barnes & Noble e-reader). They had this house built for them (Livy came from money). Harriet Beecher Stowe was a neighbor. It is a pretty cool house. The time they lived in this house marked the most productive period of Clemens’ life---he wrote Huckleberry Finn, Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court while living there. The Clemens lived very well, until some bad business investments forced them to move away, and eventually sell the property.
At one point, the structure was in danger of being demolished and replaced with a car dealership! Would have been a shame. In addition to the house, there is a museum, gift shop, and café.
Oh yeah, and he had a lot of cats. Like Hemingway. And some of the descendants of these cats still roam the grounds.
The entranceway of the house reminded me of an M. C. Escher lithograph, because there is a big square space where you can look straight up and see all the other floors of the house. Or maybe it was the woodcut designs on the walls. Anyway, it reminded me of Escher’s “Relativity.”
After our tour, we drove around the neighborhood. There was a very pretty park (Elizabeth Park) with a restaurant/event space inside of it, where I had thought maybe we could have dinner, but there was an event going on so we didn’t try. The neighborhood around Elizabeth Park reminded me of Wyoming in the Greater Cincinnati area, and I wondered why the marathon didn’t go through here. It was close to downtown and a lot nicer than most of the area we ran through.
I screwed up the restaurant pre-planning for this race. I had been looking for restaurants close to the Mark Twain house (how I found Elizabeth Park) but did not look for things near our hotel.
We drove back near the hotel and tried to use our GPS to locate potential steak houses. No luck. We ended up at Wood-n-Tap, a bar and grill (seemed to be part of a chain) that Tommy had been to while on a business trip. He was not enthused about it because he didn’t remember it as being very good. And he was correct. The beer was okay but the food was pretty bad.
The Rest of our Trip
Sunday morning after breakfast we drove up to Boston and spent the day with Susan and Ross, hanging out around their apartment in Somerville. We got there just in time to see Susan finish a 5k race just around the corner from the apartment. Apparently Davis Square is a very popular location for Boston-area races.
We had lunch at the Boston Burger Company place on the first floor of their building (can you imagine living on top of that?), afternoon coffee at Diesel Café, and dinner at Foundry on Elm (gastropub that is just a couple of blocks away). These places were all really great, of course. Good food and 5k races all within walking distance of home, does it get any better than that?
We spent the night in Springfield at a Red Roof Inn. It felt weird to stay at a Red Roof without a dog or two or three. Especially when there was apparently a dog show going on in the area.
Monday morning we drove west to Fayetteville, NY, where Tommy had some business in the afternoon. We ate lunch at Hullar’s, an excellent little homestyle restaurant and bar that Tommy had been to several times before---a great little chowhoundie find. Had some wonderful French onion soup, and meatloaf with mashed potatoes.
While Tommy visited the plant, I drove around the town. I took some pictures of the Craftsman Inn, which is where Tommy usually stays. It is a neat place, filled with Stickley furniture.
Across the street there is a mall that includes some interesting outlet stores (Stickley furniture, L. L. Bean). We didn’t have room in the car to bring back any furniture, but I took a look around the L. L. Bean outlet. Didn’t find anything worth buying. There was also an Eastern Mountain Sports, and I checked that out as well but didn’t find anything good there either.
At some point I realized that this is the home of the Fayetteville-Manlius high school, a perennial high school cross country powerhouse that generally does well at the Nike Cross Nationals (NXN). How many times has their girls' team won that thing? The fact that I know this stuff just shows what kind of a crazy running geek I have become. Anyway, I drove by the high school. If they were selling logo-wear from that school somewhere in town, I swear I would have bought something.
Soon it was time to pick Tommy up and continue our journey home. We stopped for the night in the Erie, PA suburbs, near the casino. This is where we bought the Bad Monkey beer. I had heard of this beer before---and it was originally named "Butt Monkey." Seriously. It was disgusting, but I am saving the bottle in honor of Eddy. I did not realize until I researched it online that they stopped brewing this beer a couple of years ago. No wonder it tasted so nasty.
And the next day we drove home. It was after this trip that Tommy decided to redeem some frequent flyer miles for our Thanksgiving travels! We put a couple thousand miles on that Town & Country in the three weeks that my van was in the shop. We managed to suck all the newness out of that baby, all right.
I am taking a break from running the states for the next year. My next few marathons will be closer to home. I plan to pick it up again next October, after Susan’s wedding.
