Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease,
Seats of my youth, when every sport could please,
How often have I loitered o’er thy green,
Where humble happiness endeared each scene!
Readers of 18th century English poetry may recognize those lines from Oliver Goldsmith’s poem “The Deserted Village.” If words like “o’er” and “bowers” don’t suit your post-modern taste, forgive the poet — he was writing in 1770 — and let me tell you that the sport in Montague Center on Aug. 15 certainly pleased 125 people who ran in the 45th annual Montague Mug Race or the Mini-Mug Race, along with the humbly happy volunteers who helped organize it all.
This race has charm. The scenery, for example. If you don’t enjoy five and a half miles of Franklin County back roads, you may be living in the wrong universe.
And easy logistics. No need to register in advance; just arrive on race day morning, sign up, and plunk down $35 — pretty standard for many races now — or $15 to enter the two-mile event that starts five minutes after the main event. Parking is too easy to mention.
Community ambiance. You know the theme of the Montague Bookmill, “Books you don’t need in a place you can’t find?” If you can find the Bookmill, you obviously belong there, and the same is true for the Mug Race.
Most of the participants are from Hampshire or Franklin County, but 11-year-old Lucy Byxbe listed her residence as Wyoming, and Caitlin and Amandine Miceli-Boucher, who gleefully raced each other in a sprint to the finish line, moved to Erving just last month from Paris (yes, the real one). Dan Skarzinski, who placed seventh overall, is a Montague native who lives in Coldfoot, Alaska, north of the Arctic Circle, where he raises sled dogs and leads tours for people who travel there to see the northern lights.
“I come home each year,” said Skarzinski, “to run this race and get a haircut.” To judge by his appearance at the finish, the race takes priority.
The overall men’s winner, in 31 minutes 25 seconds, was 37-year-old Mike Keebler, who grew up in New Jersey, came to Massachusetts to study and run at Boston College, and settled in Montague six years ago. Now coached by fellow B.C. alumnus Tim Ritchie, the head cross-country coach at UMass, Keebler has been training 70-80 miles per week and has won the Mug Race four times. Comfortably recovering from the effort afterwards, he said he was looking forward to running the Green River Marathon the following weekend.
The men’s runnerup was Marc Rabasco, 31, of Greenfield, who coaches at Mohawk Regional High School and runs at or near the front of many local races. He finished in 33:26, two seconds ahead of Emile Lejeune, 37, of Florence.
Anyone cheering “Go, Nicole!” could have been encouraging either of the first two women in the race. Nicole Williamson, 39, of Greenfield placed first in 42:29, followed by Nicole Couture, 34, of Turners Falls in 42:46. Cinnamon Degres, 54, of Northampton was third in 43:56. The three women finished ninth, tenth and twelfth overall in the field of 74 runners. Williamson, who started running in her twenties, has completed nine marathons, with a personal best of 3:29.
The Guilbault family of Montague dominated the two-mile event. The first male finisher was 15-year-old Matt Guilbaut, in 14:19, ahead of Ashton Marshall, 16 (15:55) and nine-year-old Gordie Neil (16:22). On the female side, Brenna Guilbaut, 13, and Shannon Guilbault, 33, took second and third in 18:05 and 18:14, behind Rebecca Weiss, 30, also of Montague, in 15:59.
Back to Mike Keebler. His miles of training, together with the sharpening of his competitive edge by whipping through the Mug Race, paid off nicely in the Green River Marathon on Aug. 23. Leading almost the entire way from Marlboro Music Center in Marlboro, Vermont, to the finish line at Greenfield Community College, Keebler won the marathon in two hours 35 minutes and 40 seconds.
This race drew 318 marathoners from as near as Marlboro and Greenfield and as far away as California and Washington. First female finisher was Katherine Dammer, 26, of Clarks Summit, Pennsylvania, in 2:58:46, a time that placed her fourteenth overall.
The finishers included four assisted wheelchair duos, i.e., teams in which one person runs while pushing a chair in which the other rides. First among them was the team of Pat Benson and Nicholas Diomede, of Lunenberg. They finished in 3:01:06.
The very popular Summit Run will take place Sept. 20. Register now at https://raceroster.com/events/2026/138415/summit-run-5k.
John Stifler has taught writing in economics at UMass and has written extensively for running magazines and newspapers. He can be reached at jstifler@umass.edu.