BY TIM MORRIS
Staff Writer
The first race of the Lake Takanassee Summer Series is “homecoming” for Middletown’s Harry Nolan.
“It’s always fun to see who will show up,” he said. “Everyone shows up to say hello.
“Every year I’m happy that I’m still here,” he added.
The Shore Athletic Club has been running 5K races around the lake on Ocean Avenue in Long Branch for 43 years now, and Nolan has been to opening night every year.
“I’ve been lucky enough to make all of the openers,” he said. “It’s a good place to be. It’s nostalgic. You have visions of races you’ve had before.”
Nolan was running for then Middletown High School when the first race around the lake was held in 1964.
“There were 15 guys at the first race,” recalled Nolan. “[Elliot] Denman put it together. He had this vision for a race in the Shore.”
Before Denman’s brainchild, Nolan noted, the only place to run during the summer was at Warinanco Park in Elizabeth. As time would prove, there was a need for a race in the Shore area. The Lake Takanassee series, run on Monday evenings throughout the summer, became a big hit. Anyone who is anyone in running in New Jersey has been to the lake. Among those are included Olympians Marty Liguori and Bill Reilly. The late Dr. George Sheehan was a frequent participant.
“It just mushroomed,” Nolan said of the series that has remained popular to runners of all fitness levels.
John Altland, a former Shore Regional star who is now running for The College of New Jersey, won the first race of the 2006 series on June 19, touring the lake’s 5,000-meter course in 16:53. The series continues through Aug. 28 with the exception of Monday, when there will be no race because of the July Fourth holiday.
Having raced the lake every year since its inception, Nolan is the meet’s historian, along with Denman. It wasn’t until the early 1970s that women started to run the lake; the first was Pat Barrett, he noted. When women joined the fold, the numbers increased. The prime time for hot racing was the 1980s, which was the decade when the fastest times were turned in. Nolan has a 14:41 to his credit, the sixth fastest on a course that has not changed over the years.
Nolan, like the Takanassee Series, has stood the test of time. After graduating from Middletown, he continued racing in college at John F. Kennedy in Nebraska. After college, the running continued and he would become, by his late 30s, one of the country’s top Masters runners. Now 59, he looks forward to 60 when he can be the new kid on the block in the 60-69 Masters Division. He’s one of a rare breed: a runner who has remained competitive for five decades.
“Some drift away,” he said. “A few of us keep coming back. There’s something about it, we’re still there.”
Nolan has managed to have career, marriage and family (four children) while remaining at the top. Those life changes are what sideline most, but the few, like Nolan, make the adjustments.
“My theory is that you can always find an hour a day to run,” he said. “I’ve run at some strange times in the morning and night.”
At Takanassee and elsewhere, Nolan can’t be blamed for feeling he is being tag-teamed by his ex-rivals. He looks up and it’s not an old foe that’s his opponent.
“I’m racing against guys’ sons and nephews,” he said.
In no time, Lake Takanassee will be celebrating 50 years, and if Nolan has anything to say about it, he’ll be there for opening night, catching up with old friends, checking out the newcomers and, of course, racing.