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Should've Been There: May all your miles be fast ... Millennium Mile,
Londonderry, NH, December 29, 2002
- Parker Morse
From Running Times, May 2003 www.runningtimes.com
Imagine getting together with a bunch of high school buddies for a New
Year's party. Imagine that most of you are runners, so you decide it's a
good idea to run a race as part of the festivities. There isn't one
nearby, so you put one on: a mile, because a longer race would be too
much work. And just so everyone goes away feeling good, you find the
fastest stretch of road in the area for a course.
Now imagine that two of these hypothetical buddies finished first and
second at the 1994 Foot Locker Nationals, a third was the 2001 USATF
1500m champion, and between them they have represented the USA
internationally about a dozen times. Now you're getting close to the
Millennium Mile, which had its fourth running in December.
The ringleaders, in this case, are John Mortimer and Matt Downin (the
high school rivals, at Londonderry High School and nearby Pinkerton
Academy, respectively, who took second and first at Foot Locker) and
Downin's older brother, Andy, who was a four-time cross country
All-American at Georgetown. When the three started planning a New Year's
party late in 1999, they realized that their guest list included five
finalists from the 1996 Olympic Trials 1500m and the guests had over 70
All-American certificates between them. "Any race director would love
that kind of turnout," said Mortimer.
In the race's first year, with the publicity help of the Manchester
Union-Leader as title sponsor, over 120 people turned out to run. Six
men ran sub-4, with Scott Anderson winning in 3:51 (a course record tied
by Andy Downin in 2001). In 2002, the fourth year of what was supposed
to be a one-time event, there were just over three hundred finishers,
and the partnership of Mortimer, Downin and Downin had added chip
timing, a former Miss New Hampshire singing the national anthem, and the
Millennium Mile scholarship fund, intended to help New Hampshire runners
compete at the collegiate level.
Unlike most road miles, which run many small heats, the Millennium Mile
starts everyone at once, giving it a race-you-to-the-mailbox exuberance
missing from many races. They shut down a major route in Londonderry for
twenty minutes, fueling the feeling that runners are getting away with
PR murder. A special entry fee of $1 for kids under 12 allows parents to
make the race an inexpensive family event, and also ensures a complete
lack of restraint in the first quarter-mile. "We liked the idea of a
elementary school kid and a 70-year-old being able to toe the line with
some of the best athletes in the country," says Mortimer.
With three different shoe company sponsors pitching in (Mortimer runs
for adidas, Matt Downin for New Balance, and Andy Downin for Nike) and
three different top-flight universities in the trio's background, the
field still rivals those of races with bigger budgets. In 2002, for
instance, Katie McGregor set the women's course record, and beat her own
track PR by four seconds.
The real magic of the Millennium Mile may be the course. For the first
quarter-mile away from Londonderry High School, it is mostly level, but
from one quarter to three quarters it sails down Mammoth Road on a hill
steep enough to make you wish for skis. At the bottom, where it swings
wide around Mack's Apples (which hosts a sledding hill when there's
snow), the tailwind takes over and carries the runners to the finish.
The 2001 race shirt included the race slogan, "May all your miles be
downhill, with the wind at your back," and for this course, it always is.
How fast is it? "Expect to run what you'd do on a track, on a good day,
in the summer, when you're peaking," said Mortimer. Checking your time
will have you considering asterisks for "aided course" in your PR
list.
Mile bests by as much as ten seconds are not uncommon.
Don't spend too long staring at your watch, though. With three different
shoe-company sponsors, close your eyes and imagine the prize table at
the post-race raffle.
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