Finish is a good start
Coventry’s Norstrom wins men’s division, New Yorker Myers the women’s winner
HARTFORD — Alex Norstrom, of Coventry, has been going to the Eversource Hartford Marathon for years. His mother ran it, his father ran it, both the full marathon and the half.
It would be his first marathon, he decided last year.
He upped his mileage, training hard through the pandemic, and Saturday, he finally stepped onto the start line of the marathon, a year after the race was canceled due to COVID-19.
And the local guy won. Norstrom, 25, a Central Connecticut graduate and a Hartbeat Track Club runner, finished the 26.2-mile race in 2 hours, 20 minutes, 40 seconds.
“This has been the goal for about a year now,” Norstrom said. “It’s awesome. I’ve always felt like the marathon was going to be my event. This is a good way to start.”
About 7,000 ran the marathon and accompanying half marathon, 5K and half marathon relay. The race’s field was scaled down, as was the elite field, which likely lost runners to the Boston Marathon, which was rescheduled to Monday due to the pandemic.
As a result, the races were dominated by local talent. Terryville’s Tyler Raymond, a 2017 Central grad, won the half marathon in 1:07:22. Chris Helminski of Mystic, a University of Hartford graduate, won the 5K in 15:22. Annmarie Tuxbury of Barkhamsted, an Olympic marathon trial qualifier, won the women’s half (1:13:45).
“This is always on my schedule because it’s so much fun,” said Tuxbury, 27. “It went a lot better than I thought it would.”
It was the same way for the women’s marathon winner, Christine
Myers of Altamont, N.Y. Her last marathon was in May in Providence. In the third mile, she tripped over a muffler lying in the road and fell, breaking her right arm. Myers got up and kept going and ended up finishing second in 2:50.
Saturday, Myers, 23, stayed upright and won the race in 2:48:34.
“There is no better feeling,” Myers said. “I’m so blessed to be here. I couldn’t have asked for a better day.”
When she fell, she said, she broke her arm in such a way that she could still move her arms to run.
“My [watch] is still shattered,” she said. “[My arm] is still not fully healed. I got back up and said some colorful words and then just kept going.”
Myers felt strong Saturday. So did Norstrom. He realized he was in the lead when the half marathoners turned back at Mile 11. Jason Ayr of Philadelphia, the runner-up, and another runner caught up to him at the halfway mark and he had company for a while.
“I pulled away at Mile 20,” Norstrom said. “I didn’t really even pick up the pace. It was me and another guy and he kind of fell off. I started cranking it a little bit and from there, I just kept going. I didn’t look back.”
Ayr, 34, finished second (2:23:08). “We made a surge to reel him back in and then the three of us ran together until 17ish,” Ayr said. “Alex made a hard move. [The other runner] responded, I didn’t. That was the last time I saw Alex. I was fading pretty hard from 18 to the finish and from 22 to the finish, it was pretty much a death march. I knew everyone was suffering similarly to me and Alex looked great so I wasn’t going to catch him. It was pretty much damage control. It worked out for second.”
Ayr’s UMass college teammate, Andrew McCann of Westerly, R.I. finished third (2:24:07).
“This is my first real competitive full,” McCann said. “I won [the] Bay State [Marathon] two years ago, but I ran about 10 minutes slower than I did today. It was a PR, but not exactly the way you like to run PRs. The wheels came off at 13 [miles].”
In the half, Raymond was in second most of the race until the last half mile or so. Then he kicked.
“It went exactly how I wanted it to go,” said Raymond, 27, who ran the half in 2017-19. “A kick at the end, gave it all I had. Tried to get through the race smart.”
He ran a personal best by 40 seconds.
“It’s the best type of half because there’s always someone cheering for you,” he said. “People in the last two miles are like, ‘Come on, you can get him, you can get him.’ I’m like, ‘I don’t know, I’m kind of tired.’ Then I was like, ‘Why should I get second? I’mgoingforfirst.Allright,let’sdoit.’