The Story of Running Travels Many Trails

“Stories from the Starting Line” is available at local book stores and Amazon.com.

If you add up the miles from all the road races we have done over the years, we could cross the country and return home more than once. That line would extend around the world multiple times once you add in the miles covered by the runners we talked to for this book. But it’s not the total miles that count; it’s what those miles mean to us. It’s the way running makes us feel happy, accomplished, at peace and most importantly, a part of a community.   

That journey, like each race we’ve run over the years, has a starting line.

For Ellen, it was her first cross-country meet on a hilly course at Belmont High School in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire. She was invited to join the Hopkinton High School cross-country team her junior year after being spotted running around the school fields. The team needed one more girl. She hadn’t known her school had a cross-country team, but when asked to join, she quickly agreed. She walked part of that first race and was disappointed she couldn’t run the whole thing. 

Today, as an adult, she returns to Belmont each August for the Belmont 10 Miler. It starts in the same spot as her very first cross- country meet and is one of the toughest ten milers in New England. Starting at mile 5.7, the road heads steeply uphill, gaining almost 400 feet in elevation over the next two mile — and that is after continuous hills for the first five miles. Ellen recalls how she struggled to finish that first cross-country race. She now finds inner strength and happiness as she attacks the challenging hills of the 10-miler.

Tom’s starting line came as an adult in the fall of 2003. Tom ran the Hopkinton Lions 5K road race, which used a stopwatch and popsicle sticks for time and place, and the Mast Yard Race, a fundraiser for Hopkinton High School, a challenging trail race that wound through forest and field and an occasional patch of poison ivy. At Mast Yard, Tom gained a love for running through nature and an appreciation of the pure test of fitness that comes with a trail race. 

Without knowing it, he was also experiencing firsthand the evolution of race management. Jeff Litchfield, who managed the race and went on to manage bigger races, including the popular Boston Prep 16 Miler in Derry, swapped out popsicle sticks for race tags with tear-off numbers. Jeff found people lost popsicle sticks, messing up the results. Back then, Jeff said, “Runner’s World” provided free bibs and race bags in exchange for finisher info. Having now been involved with thousands of races, Tom appreciates the complication and importance of accurate timing and tracking. Another thing Tom didn’t know at the time was that the race was held on the property of Ellen’s uncle, and that he and Ellen would marry some 15 years later.

We revived the Mast Yard Trail Race in 2016 after it was discontinued. It was the first race Northeast Delta Dental put on instead of just sponsoring. It started a tradition of putting on races for charities where 100 percent of registration fees go to charity. Northeast Delta Dental pays for awards, timing, food and announcing, with donations sometimes helping to defray costs. 

In 2021, the fifth and final year we put on the race, we donated all proceeds to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. Ellen’s nephew, Thomas, has battled cystic fibrosis his entire life and has had intensive treatments and missed a lot of school during long hospital stays. A lot of family came to that race and Thomas spoke to the crowd. 

Even more touching, he chose to push Havanna, our granddaughter and his toddler cousin, in a jogging stroller over rocks, roots and grass for the entire race. This is a hard feat in itself but was harder because of the heat that day. Thanks to medical breakthroughs, lung function and quality of life for many, including Thomas, now in college, is much better. We love running, but more than that we love doing good through running, and this race was particularly meaningful for us.

Helping the community while bringing the community together is a win-win. At Mast Yard, the first charity was Shriner’s Children’s Hospital in Boston, at the request of Ellen’s nephew. Over five years, the Mast Yard race also benefited other local charities, including Concord Hospital’s nurse navigator program in New Hampshire. It has also supported a local child with cystinosis, a rare genetic condition that leads to organ and tissue breakdown. The child’s grandmother had reached out to Ellen asking for fundraising help.

Running is like that. It forges connections between people and places that may not even be known at the time. Sometimes these races mark the beginning of a career as a runner; other times, they teach us a love for a distance or a terrain. Always, they instill in us a belief that we can do hard things and a drive to do it again.