After battling hiking injury, East Granby man who’s run in Antarctica will take on Hartford Marathon

Ralph Blanchard hiked what he now calls the scene of the crime this year in Maine’s Acadia National Park. He couldn’t believe he walked a half mile to get help down the rocky trail last summer with a completely torn quadriceps muscle.

Blanchard, 66, of East Granby is an outdoorsman, a hiker and a marathoner. He’s run marathons in 50 states, seven continents and completed all six Abbott World Major Marathons, including Boston, London and Tokyo.

His last marathon – which was also his 100th - was the Eversource Hartford Marathon in 2019.

His marathon days are pretty much over now. But he can still run and he can still run half marathons and that’s what he’ll be doing Saturday morning at the Hartford Marathon.

There will be a marathon, half marathon, 5K and a marathon relay, all starting at 8 a.m. in front of the Capitol Building. The finish is under the Soldiers and Sailors Arch in Bushnell Park.

“I’ve slowed down now, but I think part of it was being off during the recovery period,” Blanchard said.

While he was in the hospital on Mount Desert Island in July 2021, he read that the recovery from the injury took anywhere from 4-6 months.

“But,” he said, “the reality is you never fully recover, that’s what I’m learning now. The left leg gets tired; it doesn’t have the endurance the right leg does.”

Blanchard, who is an actuary, ran his first marathon in East Lyme in 1994, figuring he’d get his bucket list item done before the impending birth of twins. He discovered he enjoyed long runs on Sundays and started doing more marathons. Then he wanted to qualify for Boston, so he did that. Then, because he had run a number of marathons already in different states, his new goal became to run one in all 50 states. His last state was Hawaii and then people wanted to know what he was going to do next.

“People said, ‘What’s your encore?’” he said. “I’d heard about Antarctica, so I figured I’d try that.”

He ran in Antarctica, in Tokyo, Rio. His last continent was Africa in 2018.

“There was a pride of lions and the guides would spent from 9 p.m. the night before keeping track of where the lions were, so we were warned there might be a last-minute relocation of the course,” he said. “In the morning, the race was delayed half an hour. It was supposed to be delayed 20 minutes because of elephants on the course but the race director said it’s going to have to be a half hour because you don’t tell elephants to move.”

In the summer of 2021, Blanchard was hiking down a steep rocky trail in the rain on Sargent Mountain with his family.

“It was narrow and wet and I slipped on loose rock,” he said. “I got my leg underneath me. I wish I had fallen. Instead, I hyperflexed my leg and snapped the quad. I had to somehow get myself down a half mile.

“If you tear your quad, if you hold your leg straight like a pegleg, you can actually put weight on it. But if you bend it, it’s like standing on a rope - there’s no support whatsoever.

“It was a question of how to get down the trail with a pegleg. It was intense concentration for the next hour, hour and a half, to go a half mile. Every 3-4 feet was a different little puzzle to figure out.”

But he made it. He had surgery the next day at the local hospital and started rehabilitation with the goal of running the Colchester Half Marathon this February.

“The week after I had the surgery - I can’t sit around - I was doing a half mile on crutches around the neighborhood,” he said.

He was able to run a 5K on Thanksgiving, a hard hilly 10 miler in Glastonbury in early February and then the half marathon in Colchester at the end of the month.

He hopes to finish the half Saturday in around 2 hours, 40 minutes, much slower than he used to be able to run, but for Blanchard, it’s all about being out there now and finishing.

“I’ve discovered it’s much more social in the back of the pack,” he said.

For more information about the marathon: Eversource Hartford Marathon & Half Marathon 2022.

Lori Riley can be reached at lriley@courant.com.