Tom Faranda's Folly

Right, I interviewed Conor McGee, a fellow who didn’t even know about the race until the night before, and then showed up and wiped out the field. More about that at the end. (I had fun doing this posting, which is why it’s taken me five days to get it online.)

The Harry Chapin run was again a really nice day. I posted about it last year Tom Faranda’s Folly: Sunday’s Harry Chapin run and wrote this:

My town, Croton on Hudson, holds the Harry Chapin Memorial Run against Hunger every year around this time. It’s held in Croton possibly because his record agent lived here.Welcome to

Harry Chapin Harry Chapin – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia was an entertainer and singer (“Cat’s in the the Cradle,” “Taxi”) from Long Island who was involved in raising money to combat hunger worldwide. He died in a car accident in 1981.

This year, Joe decided to run in the first race, which is a one mile “fun run.” He finished second in the Open Division (not affiliated with any of the Croton schools) and ended up with a nice trophy. Lots of kids and adults do the “fun run” mile. Since Joe had raced the day before, and has a heavy practice on Monday’s, he decided to do the easy run.

Here’s the start of the one miler –

And here is Phil and Rose Rizzuto (Phil has the beard!) bringing up the rear of the “fun run” at an, uhhh, steady pace –

Here’s Joe in the home stretch, as he catches up to and then passes a younger boy. While second in the open division, overall he came about 12th, and was beaten by some fast, younger boys (and one old guy!). But still, he beat a couple of hundred others.

Now the main event is a 10K (6.21 miles), and here are two girls warming up. Kathleen Gagnon, a good friend of ours, waves as she runs with her friend, Caroline Spring.

Here are the runners getting ready – the overall winner (and the second place finisher also) are in this picture

They’re off! The ultimate winner is just to the left and behind the young blonde boy on the right.

The winner of the women’s bracket is in this picture – Sophia Spring. She’s right behind the lady putting her hands up and is looking right at me as I snapped the picture. Sophia finished 21st overall, and when she ran by me at the end of the race, she looked absolutely like she was out for a stroll. Her father told me later that she had just completed a four mile training run before coming over for the start of the race! Sophia is a freshman at Middlebury College and is on their cross country team.

Here come Kathleen and Caroline, heading to the finish. They look good for two young women finishing a 6+ mile run. Caroline is Sophia’s sister.

#197 is Pat Costa, a nurse at Sloan Kettering who I’ve gotten to know. Pat finished first in her division – finished the race in around 51 minutes

This is Gabrielle Rizzutto, whose parents are pictured in the “fun run”.

The overall winner of the race was fast, very fast. I was about 300 yards from the finish line, at Five Corners (Croton people will know the terrain), where the runners make a turn and head for the line. I could see this lone runner coming down from the library, and he was motoring. Zoomed past me, even though no other runners were in sight. The second place guy came by about three minutes later, also with no competition around him.

About the time I took the picture of Gabi (Gabrielle), I runner came joggin up the sidewalk and past me. A few minutes later he came walking back down the sidewalk, and I asked him “Didn’t you run past me on the road about 20 minutes ago?” He laughed and I got to chatting with him.

Turns out the race winner was an Irishman named Conor McGee. He is a very serious runner (he’s done a 2:35 marathon) and only found out about the Harry Chapin race one night earlier. He wasn’t able to get to a race he’d planned on doing in Connecticut, so he jumped on the internet to find a substitute, and decided to come up with his fiance to run in Croton.

We discussed important issues like the failure of the Irish National Rugby team in the World Cup, and his pending marriage in one week. And I introduced him to a few people who came wandering by – here he is with my neighbor Sue Kane and one of her sons. Sue had run in the race.

Conor won the race with a time of 33:51, while the second place runner came in around 36:40. So he blew the field away.  That’s him at the starting line, in the red racing flats (why not green racing flats?)

And here he is a bit over an hour later, looking like he could do another 10K!

I asked Conor about the race, and he said he reckoned he could have done better if he knew the course. He’d had no chance to look it over, and when he asked someone local about it, he was told that it was an easy run after getting to the dam – no more hills. He said he should have realized he wasn’t talking to a runner! When he looked back as he started to pull away from the other leaders, he thought to himself, “Do they know something I don’t know?” But as it turned out, he simply had too much gas for everyone else.

When you think about his time – a five and a half minute mile pace the whole way – well that’s cooking.

Conor is Irish, and I have to give the Irish their due – remember Brigid was born in Cork!

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