The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Runner’s accomplishment ‘is crazy cool’
Mother of 3 crushes Winter Warrior challenge
MIDDLETOWN — A 35-year-old city woman led the pack of “winter warriors” who last month competed to run or walk as many miles outdoors as they could every single day in January.
Celeste Fong was among Connecticut runners who participated in the Branford-based Sound Runner Winter Warrior challenge. It was no easy feat, she admitted.
Traveling a record 700.48 miles during the bitter cold, Fong broke the event’s record (666 miles), besting the second runner-up, who clocked in with 621. Salena Bennett-Chatman of Middletown came in fifth, with 585.56.
“That wasn’t my goal. It started with, ‘I’m going to start the year with a sunrise and a marathon,’” Fong said. From there, she set her sights on two marathons in a row. Fong is a member of the Run 169 Town Society, which has a mission to run a race in
every one of the state’s 169 municipalities.
For most of her miles, Fong was alone, since the pandemic made it difficult to run with others, she said.
“I had this magic number in my head of 20 miles a day. I don’t know why. It’s weird,” Fong said. “I had one day when I was really, really sick and only did 17.5 miles.”
Fong keeps fit enough to easily do 20 miles a day, although that doesn’t mean the feat is an easy one, she said.
Fong is not one to boast, said friend and fellow Run 169 member Katie Baruth. “She’s a humble person,” Baruth said.
Fong is a slower runner — her average pace is in the mid-10-minute-mile range, she said. In fact, for Winter Warrior, she did a combination of walking, running and hiking in the woods so it wouldn’t be too hard on her body.
“There were days when it was 20.01 (miles) and I was done. There were days when it was just that bad, where every step was excruciating. And then there were days I did 20.5 miles and it was nothing,” Fong said. “Had I not been absolutely starving, I could have kept going.”
“Seven hundred is crazy — in the freezing, freezing cold and wind,” said Baruth, herself an ultramarathoner who has conquered most race distances. “You have to be mentally strong, more so than just physically strong.”
Baruth’s record for a single day is 63 miles, something she jokingly chalks up to “stupidity.”
“I think her accomplishment is crazy cool, to be able to push yourself to 700 miles in a month. I am super proud of her,” said friend Bennett-Chatman.
Bennett-Chatman’s goal was 500 miles. She was fairly sure she could accomplish that with a combination of running, hiking and walking.
Still, Bennett-Chatman she never expected to place in the top five — “especially once I learned that it was not just Winter Warrior Connecticut. The New Hampshire and Massachusetts runners really put up huge running miles,” she said. “They were fun to compete against and seeing their Strava (mobile tracking application) pop up forced me to push harder.” .
Baruth remarked on the runners’ achievements online.
“Salena averaged 18.87 miles a day, and probably that many curse words per mile by the end of the challenge,” Baruth wrote on social media.
Of Fong, Baruth wrote on the group’s Facebook page, “Celeste shattered the previous Winter Warrior record by 34 miles! She averaged approximately 22.58 miles a day for the month of January.”
Fong is a stay-at-home mother of three — ages 18, 14 and 10, all of whom are remote learners. They’re self-sufficient, said Fong, whose husband works from home. That allows her to spend hours each day out on the road. Her father also helps out on the longer runs, picking her up afterward.
“There were days when I said, ‘why am I doing this? I don’t want to do another step,’” Fong said. “But then there’s that underlying ‘am I capable of doing this’ and proving to myself that I am,” said Fong, whose former monthly record was 537 miles.
Cross training really helps, she said. Fong recalls being “so scared” before her first marathon in Hartford. She finished that one, and that very day signed up for the Colchester Half Marathon.
Fong developed a major lung infection at the beginning of 2020, which put her out of commission for some time, she said. That’s when she turned to hiking.
There were days when the runner would experience full-body muscle aches after she finished her exercise. “Every day, I’d come home when I was done with my mileage. I’d sink in an Epsom salt bubble bath with the Jacuzzi jets running,” Fong said.
In addition, every other week, she got a leg massage. “I took care of them,” she said.
“It couldn’t go to a better person,” Baruth said. “For years, she’s put in a lot of hard work. She’s gotten faster. She’s crushed her half-marathon times recently,” Baruth said. “She’s really dedicated herself to getting better.”
For information on next year’s event, visit soundrunner.com. To learn more about Run 169, go to the Facebook page.