MYSTIC – Reflecting on eight consecutive decades spent running marathons, Ambrose “Amby” Burfoot’s greatest joy as an 80-year-old athlete is “being able to run pain-free.”
“Up until a week ago, I’ve been running absolutely pain-free for 15 years, so it’s a great joy to know you’re going to wake up the next day to go out running and enjoy it,” said Burfoot, a Mystic resident.
Burfoot, who has been running since he was 16 years old, made history as the winner of the 1968 Boston Marathon during his senior year at Wesleyan University. The honor marked Burfoot as the first college student to win the marathon and the first American to win since his high school coach, John J. Kelley, in 1957.
With multiple marathons under his running shoes, Burfoot, now 80, currently runs four to five times a week, covering 25 to 30 miles “in a good week” and cross-training at the gym the rest of the week.
This fall, Burfoot set his sights on a new running goal – the Eversource Hartford Marathon, where he planned to become the first person to run a marathon in an eighth consecutive decade of his life.
Burfoot said he had “a great summer of training” in preparation for the Oct. 10 marathon and planned to run the marathon in honor of his friend and former Wesleyan roommate and teammate, Jeff Galloway. Known as the pioneer of the run/walk method, Galloway, who competed in the 10,000-meter run of the 1972 Olympics, died this past February at the age of 80.
“I wanted to do it, to be the first, and I wanted to do it in Jeff’s memory,” Burfoot said, adding, “I was going to wear a shirt saying something like, ‘I’m running my eighth decade marathon with Jeff Galloway.'”
However, an unexpected injury during a media photo shoot changed Burfoot’s fall plans just one week before the Hartford marathon.
Burfoot said he had recently done a couple media photo shoots to promote his upcoming run, including one shoot on a beach this past Friday.
“They wanted to get me running at the shore in Mystic,” he said, “and I volunteered that I’d run in the sand and they could get a nice photo of water and sand, and I rolled my ankle in the sand and strained unknown additional tissues in the foot.”
Burfoot said he’s had an X-ray done on his foot and no broken bones were detected, though he’s now on the wait list for an MRI to learn more. Yet one thing remains certain – he won’t be running in Saturday’s marathon.
Burfoot admitted he was “very depressed” about not being able to run the Eversource Hartford Marathon.
“I felt very embarrassed over the fact that I told people I was going to set this eight-decade record and now I’m not,” he said, “but people, especially runners, know that injuries come out of nowhere, and they know I’ve been at it a long time and they know I’ll be back at it.”
Burfoot said he still plans to attend the Eversource Hartford Marathon where he’ll cheer for the other runners at the finish line, adding he hopes to run it next year. In the meantime, he said he’s been doing physical therapy twice a week in Groton with a physical therapist that is “a serious active marathon runner.”
While he won’t be running in the Hartford marathon, Burfoot still has his sights on running the Manchester Road Race on Thanksgiving Day, which he’s run for 63 years in a row.
“I very, very much want to get my foot healthy enough so I can complete that race as I have in the past,” he said, “but keeping my annual participation streak going is very important.”
This article originally published at 80-year-old Connecticut running legend’s marathon record attempt derailed by freak injury.
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