The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Don’t overthink, just run
Med student, 29, who won Hartford Marathon, takes life’s stresses in stride By Cassandra Day
ESSEX — There’s a photograph of Hartford Marathon winner Christopher Zablocki rounding the turn just before the finish line chute at the race Oct. 14 at Bushnell Park.
Outfitted in his white-and-red Polska Running Team shirt, a nod to his Polish heritage, Zablocki, 29, of Essex, has his teeth bared and eyes intently focused on the ribbon stretched taut for the first-place winner to break. He’s the picture of intensity and determination. Zablocki took two days off after his 2:17:59 win. “That’s the bad thing about marathons — you can’t run for a couple days after,” said the Xavier High School graduate who was born in Middletown. He’s less than three weeks from graduating from the American University of the Caribbean School of Medicine, has passed his boards, and is now applying for residencies.
“(Marathons take) the intensity of competition to a different level than a shorter race, especially when you’re neck and neck with another guy after going at it for 20 miles.” Christopher Zablocki, Hartford Marathon winner
Time is a precious commodity in Zablocki’s life, something he’d rather not fritter away fiddling with a GPS watch or smartphone running app.
“If you’re going to spend an extra 10 minutes doing all the computer work to track your run, it probably would be better spent running an extra two miles,” he said.
(That’s more like a single mile for all the non-recordsetting athletes out there.)
Before a marathon, Zablocki said he’ll drink some tea with lemon for breakfast, maybe have some mangos or other fruit with chia seeds, eggs and a couple of Cliff Bars. “Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and have one. Sometimes you get so excited before a race, you don’t sleep as much as usual.”
During races, Zablocki relies on his “Polish Gu’s” — energy gels — and drinks UCAN to refuel during longer distance competitions.
He recalls one marathon in Georgia, running alongside Kenyan runners. “We were going pretty slow the first 14 miles of the race, but I knew they were going to pick it up at some point (over 2:30 pace),” he said of the race, which was sponsored by Snickers Marathon bars.
“They were handing them out everywhere, so I figured I might have one to make sure I have some energy left for when” (the Kenyans) took off.
He ended up getting a half-marathon personal best during the second half of the race.
The Dartmouth College grad works at Danbury Hospital and stays in the dorms there during the week.
He spent almost three hours running at the Connecticut Valley Railroad State Park preserve this past weekend, through Essex, Old Saybrook and Westbrook. Weekends in Essex, he’s able to do longer runs because he’s not working.
During the week, depending on his work schedule, he’ll hit the gym for an hour and a half or wake up at 5 a.m. and head outdoors for some exercise at places like Central Park in New York City. Mondays are his rest day.
During the Harvard Pilgrim Middletown Half April 9, Zablocki, who has been running for more than half his life, came in first place, crossing the finish line at 1:07:43.
While most runners, especially those training for a marathon, set a goal time or distance for their workouts, keeping track of their progress with a pedometer, app or GPS watch, Zablocki just laces up his Newtown sneakers and goes.
“A lot of people track how far they run,” said Zablocki, who prefers trail work. “I just put on my shoes and get lost in the woods.”
He ran his first race, the Clinton Bluefish 5K, while a middle schooler. Zablocki completed it in 21 minutes — a respectable 6:46 pace.
But wait: Zablocki took so “long” because he took a pit stop to find his companions.
“I was doing it with a bunch of friends, so after a mile, I was standing waiting for them. Then they caught up,” Zablocki said.
Marathons are especially exciting for him, Zablocki said. “It takes the intensity of competition to a different level than a shorter race, especially when you’re neck and neck with another guy after going at it for 20 miles.”
Zablocki is no stranger to fame. In March, he set the world at the Armory NYC Indoor Marathon with a 2:21:48 time.
Nicholas Migani of the Higganum section of Haddam, who won the Hartford Marathon Charity 5K Oct. 14 in a time of 15:40, said he’s known Zablocki for a couple years.
Migani saw him after he ran a 10K in Old Saybrook. “He said, ‘I’m just going to go down to the water and run five miles as hard as I can and then go swimming,’” Migani remembered.
Zablocki won that race — even after going the wrong way twice, said Migani, a school psychologist in Bristol who also works at Soundrunner in Glastonbury and Old Saybrook.
In April, Migani came in third place in the Hartford Marathon Legends 4.5 miler with 24:43.
Migani trains six days a week, averaging about six miles a day. “I’m kind of known among my friends as being one of the lower-mileage runners. The anomaly of it is that I run significantly less miles than everyone else, but somehow am able to sometimes win or at least be near them in races, which is nice,” said Migani, whose highest weekly mileage has been 70.
“Part of the reason why I usually stay that low is if I go over, I tend to get injured, but I’m also kind of — people hate when I say this — a bigger runner than most of them,” Migani said. “Most are significantly lighter than I am, so for me, it’s a lot of pounding on my knees.
“I keep it short and quick and enjoy it a little bit more than going out and doing 15-mile runs,” he said.
Migani tries to race every other weekend. His favorites are the Brooklyn Fair 5K, which is now defunct, the USATF-CT Road Racing Grand Prix, the Delaney Dash in Old Saybrook and Spring Street Mile in Manchester, which he ran one year in 4:07.
The latter is a downhill course, which affords racers bragging rights. But Migani doesn’t consider his time a personal record for the mile.
“It’s a wild time. I am certainly not capable of running 4:07 on a flat mile, so it’s a lot of fun to say, ‘My mile is 4:07,’ or whatever.”
He hopes to run the Manchester Road Race on Thanksgiving Day and Fischang-Cicchetti Memorial Road Race in Waterbury Nov. 17.
For his part, Zablocki has some advice for anyone thinking of training for a first marathon.
“It’s very simple. You just go out and run in the morning and then maybe every third day, try to do some faster work — at least at marathon pace,” he said.
“People make it more complicated than it has to be,” Zablocki said.