BHS Athletes Go The Distance

After football season ended, Brandon Slater, Rob Morrin and Justin Zup all seemed to have too much free time on their hands. They had played football for four years of high school. It was a very demanding and time-consuming sport. Once this, their season was over, the trio did not know what to do with themselves.

Slater's father, Ralph Slater started running at the age of 30 has since done many sprint triathlons, half marathons and last year completed his first 70.3 Ironman in July 2011 in RI and 26.2 marathon in Hartford CT in October 2011. The boys were amazed by his determination and the boys talked about if Ralph could run a full marathon now at 44 years of age they could do it at 18. So the training began.

In January, the boys reviewed a training program with Ralph Slater and started the endeavor to run their first 26.2 at the Cox Road Race.

They worked out by weightlifting in the mornings at Powerhouse Gym, but knew the treadmill would not do it so they did all their running on the road daily after school saving the long runs required for Saturday. By the end of February, their training had them running 12 miles on the weekend so they decided to do a half marathon (13.1 miles) in Colchester.

The training continued and May 6, 2012 all three boys completed their first 26.2 marathon with Ralph Slater completing his second.

The families of the three boys were at the marathon site for the Cox Road Race the whole weekend to support their efforts.