By ALEC O'MEARA
Union Leader Correspondent
12-28-08

LONDONDERRY – Most people use fireworks and champagne to ring in the New Year. In Londonderry, they run fast.

Sub-four-minute-mile fast, actually.

Today marks the 10th running of the Millennium Mile, which was started in 2000 by friends John Mortimer and Matt Downin.

Mortimer, a 1995 graduate of Londonderry High School, and Downin, a 1995 graduate of Pinkerton Academy, had both been track stars in high school and both went on to find success at the college level.

During Thanksgiving weekend in 1999, the two friends decided to host a race as part of their New Year's celebration for friends and family. In their case, "friends and family" meant assembling a good portion of the best runners in the country.

"We starting thinking about it, and we realized that we had a pretty fast party developing, a party with a lot of fast people I mean, so we started looking for a race we could enter," Mortimer said. "As it turned out, there was nothing in the area, so we created our own."

After throwing around ideas for a 5k or 10k event, the pair instead decided on making the race a mile long and began building one of the fastest events of its kind in the state.

The course is simple: Take off from Londonderry High School and barrel down Mammoth Road until you pass the farm stand at Mack's Apples. The race is almost entirely downhill, dropping a total of 180 feet in elevation, making for naturally fast times. Before the 1999 race, no one had even recorded a sub-four-minute mile in New Hampshire. However, the favorable track combined with the elite group of runners (the first race featured five of the 12 qualifiers in the 1996 Olympic 1500m trials) made for a show for the ages. Six runners clocked in at less than four minutes, with Scott Anderson of Washington, D.C., winning with a time of 3 minutes, 51 seconds, eight seconds off the world record.

The time has yet to be bested on the Millennium Mile course, though Matt's brother Andy Downin tied the mark in the third annual running.

Through careful cultivation, Mortimer and Downin have worked to turn the Millennium Mile into a community event.

Now no longer just a race for the elite, the race has become part of celebrating the holidays. More than 800 competitors ran in the 2007 race, and proceeds from the event now go toward the Jack and June Mortimer Scholarship fund, awarded annually to a student athlete who excels in track and field.

The race's easy terrain makes it a popular winter run for many locals, and the short length makes it easy for all to participate, Mortimer said. Racers from 2 to 82 have posted record times in their respective age groups.

Mortimer had hoped to attract over 1,000 racers this year to make it a "true" millennium, but barring a huge number of same-day registrations that appears unlikely, especially because of the ice storm. And Mortimer, currently a track coach at the University of Kentucky, is staying close to home because his wife is 81„2 months pregnant.

Mortimer has been monitoring the recovery effort from the ice storm carefully and said that had the Londonderry High School Gym remained a shelter through the end of the week, he was unsure what would have happened to the race despite assurances from LHS Athletic Director Howard Sobolov that an alternative would have been found.

"Because of everything, we really didn't put the same effort into recruiting the elites as we have in previous years, so it will be interesting to see how many people turn out to race just to race," Mortimer said, adding that he is hopeful he may get off the hook of having the slowest winning time (4 minutes) to date in the race.

"The weather report was for a starting time in the 40s with rain, so it will be interesting to see the hardcore runners' turnout," Mortimer said.

The starting gun for the 10th running of the Millennium Mile sounds at 2 p.m. in front of the high school. Approximately five minutes later, all three cash prizes for both men and women will be spoken for, as will "dash for the cash" prizes for the first to reach the quarter, half and three-quarter marks in the race.

As for the "Millennium" tag, the race is stuck with it for the time being.

"We want what they got with Gillette Stadium, where someone offers to buy the naming rights. That would be good for the scholarship," Mortimer said. "Until that happens, Millennium' works just fine."