BY RYAN O’CONNOR
Sean Colligan thought it would be fun to welcome a couple of his friends from Manchester to the annual Goffstown Gallop – a 28-year-old non-sanctioned road race pitting runners from across the state and beyond against each other.
Less than a half an hour after the race began, the soon-to-be Goffstown High School senior wished he hadn’t extended the invitation to at least one of his fellow runners from the Queen City.
Memorial High cross country runner Ben Coutu, who also enters his senior year late this summer, sprinted past Colligan late in the race to win in 28 minutes, 54.31 seconds.
“He’s not coming next year,” Colligan joked after the event. “I was leading the whole race until the last half mile when Ben passed me. I thought he might get me at the end, but that’s all right, second’s good, and I’m still the first hometown runner to finish.”
Another Goffstown resident, Sally Sites, finished first among women with a time of 35:39.24. But following the race, she looked past the personal victory.
“The fact that it’s a hometown event and it benefits the recreation department and kind of brings people together really makes this nice,” she said.
To many entrants, the local flavor is exactly what the Gallop is all about.
“It’s a great race, and it’s kind of a little secret because it’s not advertised on the Web and not a lot of people know about it,” said Bedford’s Brian Mahoney, who has participated roughly half a dozen times since he first ran the race 25 years ago. “It’s a small race. It’s well organized. There’s usually great weather, and there’s a different bunch of people – a lot of locals – that come run it, which makes this really enjoyable.”
The event, which this year included more than 170 racers, was started in 1980 by Dave French, Goffstown Parks and Recreation director.
“Our first race, we had 72 people, and we gave out T-shirts for the first 15 people who came across,” said French. “So it’s grown from that to a lot of age classifications, resident, non-resident. Plus we give out an award to the first overall male and female to finish.”
But it’s the tradition, along with French’s continued insistence that the event avoid commercialization, that keeps participants coming back.
“The appeal is we’ve made it a real family event that people come back for year after year, which I kind of like because it’s like an old home day,” he said. “We just try to keep it a real fun, old-fashioned event that has a kind of down-home flavor to it.”
Unlike many modern races which use tracking chips and other modern competitive innovations, French and recreation department volunteers still hand out tongue depressors at the end of the race to indicate placement.
And though French advertises in local publications, he says nothing is more valuable than word of mouth.
In fact, he said, a family originally from Manchester, which moved to Albany, N.Y., in the mid-1980s, returned each year for the event until recently.
Another family traveled from Virginia to participate after hearing about the race from local family members.
The only thing that has changed, besides the prizes, is the age of participants, which French says is now primarily 35 to 55.
Nonetheless, French, who ran in several Boston Marathons, among other races, said the hard work is worth the effort.
“The community has really embraced this, and I have an emotional tie to see people coming back for this event, which has stayed virtually the same all these years through rain and hot weather,” said French. “I’ve always liked doing things that bring large groups of people together, and I think this is something that a lot of people look forward to and have on their calendar each year.”