Rick Conte ran the first New Haven 20K road race in 1978 in Converse basketball sneakers. He had never run 12.4 miles before.
Mark Martin had been running that summer and saw something in the newspaper about the first race on Labor Day. He ran his best time that year, 1 hour and 20 minutes.
It was Peter Sanchez’s first road race. He was 25 years old. The weather, he remembered, was perfect with a light breeze and low humidity.
Charles Matassa had been running, inspired by the running boom of the mid-70s, and figured he’d do it too.
“Nobody knew what a 20K was,” Matassa said. “It was a challenge, we figured ‘Why not, let’s do it.’ It was complete horror show in terms of not being trained enough to run that far. But we did it.”
Those four runners plus two others – now all in their 60s and 70s – have run the race, now the Faxon Law New Haven 20K and half marathon, for 47 straight years, lining up every Labor Day morning at the start line on the New Haven Green – and they will be back again Monday for the race, which is the 20K national championship, attracting top runners from around the country.
Walter Messersmith of Hamden and Stephen Praskievicz of Bethany are the other two “streakers” who will run again for the 48th time.
It’s an impressive streak considering the length of the race and the weather, which is usually hot and humid.
“Every year, I feel like they’ve added 1/10th of a mile extra to the race,” said Sanchez, 73, of Branford. “But we’re motivated to keep going as long as we can, because we’ve put so much time and effort into this.
“Initially, I thought I’d run the first race and call it quits. It just kind of fed on itself and snowballed.”
In 1978, Bill Rodgers, who had won the Boston Marathon that spring for the second time, was the favorite to win (and did). Harry Chapin played a post-race benefit concert at Woolsey Hall. The road race program had advertisements for nearby concerts by Bruce Springsteen and Bob Seger ($8.50 per ticket). There were also tips for spectators: “Urge the participants on to victory.” The Yale Co-op “marathon shop” advertised Nike Waffle Trainers for sale. Only the first 500 runners would be timed; the rest were told to “note their own times as they crossed the finish line.”
Conte, a retired New Haven firefighter who now lives in Branford, lived in New Haven at the time and ran to stay in shape. He and one of his friends decided to run the race for fun.
“Like Rocky said, ‘I was a ham-and-egger’, a middle-of-the-road guy,” said Conte, 72, the only one of the streakers who now runs the half marathon instead of the 20K. “I had friends my age, they blew me away, but these guys ran every day.”
Still, he would circle Labor Day on his calendar every year and train for it, even though he wasn’t a dedicated runner.
Matassa ran more back in the day but now only runs once a week to train for the race.
“I used to run fairly regularly,” said Matassa, 69, who lives in New Haven. “I wasn’t crazy about running but I used to do it because of the race. Back then I was relatively fast. I keep doing it because it forces me to stay in some degree of reasonably good shape.”
The streakers have stayed relatively injury free throughout the 47 years. Martin almost didn’t make it one year in the early 2000s because he injured his hamstring, but he went to a doctor who treated it, and he was able to run. Matassa hurt his back one year but a chiropractor at the pre-race expo helped him out.
In 2020, the race was canceled due to COVID but many of the runners and the streakers showed up on the course to run it.
“We just got together and ran,” Conte said. “We had fun. That was my most memorable year.”
Mark Martin, one of the six “streakers” who have run every New Haven Road Race since its inception in 1978. (Photo courtesy of Mark Martin)
Martin ran 50 laps on a high school track that year to get his virtual race done.
The course has changed over the years, but it’s been the same since 2012. Martin still got lost last year.
“I was running with a group of people,” he said. “You figure I’d know the course. We took the wrong turn. I couldn’t believe it. I ran over a half marathon.”
How much longer will they run? No one knows, but right now, no one is planning on stopping.
“There were eight or nine of us some years ago and we were joking, I think the goal was to see who would be the last man standing,” Matassa said. “I think that’s kind of the goal, but now we all just want to make it to 50.”
