By Clark Judge
(May 6, 2025) — The annual Killingworth Road Race is moving … but not to another town. To another date.
The four-mile run will switch from its customary first Saturday in August – in this case, August 2nd – to the fourth of the month, or August 23, 2025, with the race scheduled to start at the usual 8:30 a.m. time. The move is the first time in years the date has changed but was made after members of the race committee thought it necessary.
“It was pretty much a consensus,” said chairman Chuck Langevin.
According to Langevin, a couple of factors influenced the decision, with increased summer temperatures one of them. Hartford last summer had its warmest period on record from June through August, with temperatures averaging 75.5 degrees — or 3.6 degree above normal, according to the Northeast Regional Climate Center.
No need to remind runners. Last year’s race was run on a hot and humid morning, with 17-year-old Jack Cozean winning it by over a minute. But the weather affected others, with three runners treated afterward for heat exhaustion – including second-place finisher Kurt Tiedemann, who collapsed shortly after crossing the finish line.
All recovered and were able to walk away.
Nevertheless, it was the first time in the seventeen years that Langevin has been associated with the race that he could remember anyone needing immediate medical attention. With that in mind, the race committee promised to consider changes, including pushing the run back to a later date in August.
Now it has.
“We were going to try to do it in the school year,” said Langevin, “but then we thought we might lose the cross-country competitors (like Cozean) who typically show up. So, we decided on this date because of scheduling conflicts and the fact that we thought later in the summer might afford us a better chance for good weather.”
He may be on to something. A check of last year’s weather reveals that at or around the start of the Killingworth road race, the temperature was 78 degrees. Three weeks later, however, it was 71 at the same time.
Neither the temperature nor oppressive humidity last year seemed to bother Cozean, who finished in 22:08 to score his first Killingworth victory. He admitted later that he was “used to running in the heat” and was unaffected by it. However, women’s winner Linda Spooner of Sturbridge, Massachusetts, had another story to tell — confessing that it was “was tough out there” because of the humidity. Nevertheless, she finished three minutes ahead of the women’s runner-up and placed ninth overall.
It was the second time in three years and the third time overall that Spooner won the women’s division.
“As we did last year,” said Langevin, “we encourage all runners to hydrate before the race and to use the water on the course on hot days.”
Photo by Clark Judge
