Higgins Coming Up On 35th Anniversary Of Accidental Victory In NYC Marathon
By Joe Wojtas
Published on 10/29/2006 in The New London Day
It was 35 years ago this fall that Norm Higgins of Lisbon drove down one morning to New York City for what he thought would be a 5-kilometer race at Van Cortland Park. When he got there, no one was around. So he called a race official who told him the race was in Central Park. When he finally arrived at the YMCA where runners were checking in, the 34 year-old Higgins discovered the race was not a 5K but instead the New York City Marathon. That's right, the same New York City Marathon that will be held next Sunday.
So that's how I happened to win the second annual New York City Marathon, Higgins joked on Saturday.
Higgins paid his $10 entry fee and decided he would use the race as a training run for a marathon he planned to run at the end of the year. He said the race felt like one of his training runs along a rugged 15K loop that encompassed Connecticut College and its arboretum, the Coast Guard Academy and Mamacoke Island.
Back in September of 1971, the marathon was held along a four-loop course plus two miles, all within the confines of Central Park. The course is known for its relentless rolling hills, and on that day, the temperature eclipsed 90 degrees. Higgins, who had won the national marathon championship in Yonkers and finished fifth in Boston a few years earlier, passed the halfway mark in under 64 minutes on his way to a 2:22 finish. By the end he had lapped almost all of the 500 competitors. He remains the only Connecticut winner of the race in its 36-year history.
When he went up to get his trophy, Higgins recalled that author Erich Segal of Love Story fame told him, That was the most amazing thing in the world. I think you lapped me twice.
Higgins then accepted his prize. Not the $130,000 check that next week's winner will get but a 21/2-foot tall trophy featuring the Statue of Liberty and a sweat suit.
Amazingly, Higgins said he had only been training for three weeks before the race because he was instead preparing for a December marathon, at which he would run 2:15.
He had taken two weeks off before that to ride his bike from Quaker Hill to Mount Washington to hike and then to paint his mother's house.
Higgins said he doesn't tell people he won the race but does bring the trophy into his store, Connecticut Sporting Goods in East Lyme, about this time every year. He tries to watch the race each year even though today's media spectacle barely resembles those early races in the park. Still, his half-marathon split that day would have kept him among the leaders next Sunday. His finishing time would have placed him in the top 25 except that he ran a tougher course.
At the time of his New York win, Higgins was coaching at St. Bernard School and over the years has coached local stars such as Jan Merrill-Morin and Liz Mueller among others. Two of his current runners are Chris Croff of Griswold and Jacob Edwards of North Stonington, the grandson of former Boston Marathon winner Johnny Kelley of Mystic. Higgins attributes much of his success to what he learned from Kelley, and the two men still talk frequently.
He sees a hunger for success in Croft and Edwards, the same hunger he said he, Kelley, Amby Burfoot and others had in the past. He said it's that hunger that is missing in today's elite runners who sometimes care more about sponsorship and money.
I think the Americans are as good as the Africans but they have to get as hungry as them for success. Not hungry for the money, but for the success,� he said.