Michael Colangelo
Ramapo 1971-74
Albertus Magnus 1974-75
Running has always been a perfect pursuit for Michael Colangelo. Not in the sense of seeking perfection, but in shattering self-imposed limits. Runners need to take risks to be great, and Mike is nothing if not a risk-taker. At age 14, he hopped in the Jersey Shore Marathon and proceeded to clock an outstanding time of 2 hours 52 minutes 55 seconds, despite having never run more than eight or nine miles at a time and without any structured training.
“I guess I was inexperienced enough to have no fear,” Mike says of his only stab at the 26.2-mile distance, which left him gimpy-legged for several days. “In fact, I think fear is the biggest obstacle for runners, as it is in many things in life.”
How about the time, as a high school sophomore, he ran from Ramapo to Philadelphia with buddy Jerry Haslam of Suffern to watch the Penn Relays? It took three days and covered almost 150 miles, counting back-tracking and getting lost, and they never even got to witness the meet itself, but that didn’t bother Mike in the least. “For me, it’s never really been about the destination, but always the journey, the road, the adventure, wanting to see what’s around the next turn, or over the next hill. For me, running is really a form of transportation.”
Even his choice of schools reflected his penchant for risk-taking. Over a three-year period he had developed into a premier distance runner at Ramapo High School, especially in cross country, where he finished sixth in the State Class A race as a junior and second in the Rockland County meet behind Suffern ace Mike Hagon. When a looming district-wide austerity budget jeopardized the school’s athletic program after his junior year, Mike heeded the advice of a Ramapo teacher/assistant coach and transferred to Albertus Magnus, the Bardonia-based Catholic high school then renowned for its cross country program.
Making the transition from Ramapo to Albertus was not easy for Mike. The schools were polar opposites in every conceivable way. The respective track and cross country teams exemplified the dichotomy: At Ramapo, Mike would sometimes be the only athlete accompanying Coach Jim Pollard to a meet. At Albertus, he was surrounded by teammates who warmly accepted him into their ranks and asked for nothing more than his best effort. “I really didn’t fit in [at Albertus], outside of the track guys,” he says. “They were great – accepting, open, friendly, but still trying to leave me behind in every practice and race! It was all about the running.”
Mike’s athletic debut at Albertus was inauspicious, to say the least. He suffered from asthma that left him gasping in early-season workouts. A summer car accident resulted in numerous stitches to his forehead, delaying the start of his season and necessitating his wearing a turban-like head wrap for a few meets.
Still, he persevered and rose to the top of the Falcon pecking order, capturing the County and New York State Class B cross country crowns. He led the 1974 Albertus harrier squad – the fabled “Long Red Line” – to County, Section 9, New York State and Eastern States championships, placing sixth in the latter, star-studded field. The team went undefeated, winning four other major invitationals and all of its dual meets, and earned a No. 2 national ranking based on combined time in a 2-mile track run at season’s end.
“I had been second in the County the year before, and felt I should be the best in the county,” he recalls, “but at the beginning of the year at Albertus, I couldn’t even make the varsity. It was humbling. The team was so good. But the guys were so great that even though I was doing poorly individually, I felt part of something great. I did gain confidence week after week, and when the County meet came, I still thought I was the rightful favorite. Winning that race was like vindication for me.”
In the State meet at Sunken Meadow State Park, Mike followed Albertus coach Dick Weis’s strategy to the letter, holding back early on and waiting until the latter stages to take command of the race. “I was very confident at the state meet. The day before the race, Mr. Weis brought me into his office and said, ‘Mike, I don’t usually tell runners how to run a race. I believe they have to learn on their own, but in this case I’m going to tell you what to do, because if you do it, you’ll win.’ He told me what to do, and I did it.”
Mike thus became the third Rocklander in four years to win a state XC title, after Nyack’s Dave Billings in 1971 and Howie McNiff of Albertus in ’72. Nanuet’s Bret Watzka made it four in five years by winning in ’75. In 1999 Mike was permanently ensconced in the hills-and-trails pantheon by being named one of 21 male honorees on the Rockland County All-Century Cross Country Team.
In track, Mike was runner-up in the 1975 New York State indoor mile run, and tacked on three more County titles and four Section 9 gold medals, including relays. His fastest open mile was a 4:19.7 en route to victory in the ’75 outdoor County meet. He split a 4:16 anchoring Albertus’s distance medley at the indoor Easterns at Princeton, and also authored a 1:56 880 split outdoors in the two-mile relay.
Mike feels privileged to have been guided by caring coaches such as Jim Pollard and Dick Weis throughout his high school career. Pollard was “a great coach and a great friend,” the catalyst of a coaching staff that also included assistant Anthony ‘Box” James. Weis was “warm, funny, smart, and a great judge of character,” Mike says. “He had a reputation as a disciplinarian, but he treated each person as an individual.”
Mike went on to Princeton University but his competitive running career was snuffed out by an Achilles heel injury after indoor season his freshman year. He graduated with a degree in religion and, true to his adventuresome spirit, went to live in Japan. He operated a tutorial school in Osaka for seven years, recruiting his teachers from Princeton to teach English to 300 students of all ages. He also expanded to the travel business and arranged educational tours and programs for Japanese people wanting to study or travel overseas.
During his decade-long stay in Japan, Mike got married and started a family. He and his wife of 28 years, Junko, are the parents of son Gino, 26, a Rutgers graduate living and working in Chicago, and daughter Nina, 22, a senior in the School of Public Affairs at Baruch College in Manhattan.
Mike, who is 53, has owned or managed various businesses, mainly in the education and tourism industries, both in Japan and New York. He operated a motor coach company in New York for 10 years, and for the past four years has been a partner with his brother in a public relations company in New York focusing on food, wine and spirits. Many of his customers are from Italy and Japan, as well as the U.S. “I handle the business and finance side,” he says, “while my brother and our 15 employees do all the work!”
He also runs an English-teaching bed & breakfast in Harlem on a part-time basis. “I get visitors from all over the world who come to New York wanting a little more than a usual vacation in a normal hotel.” Mike and his family make their home in Ridgewood, N.J., and he also has a residence at the B&B in Manhattan.
Mike still gets out to run three days a week, logging 15 to 18 miles in a typical week. And he’s got some juice in those legs, turning in a sprightly 5:23 road mile last fall and a 5:19 in 2009. “I’m still in decent shape for an old man,” he jokes. “Still the greatest decision I ever made in my life was to choose running as my sport.”
“I guess I was inexperienced enough to have no fear,” Mike says of his only stab at the 26.2-mile distance, which left him gimpy-legged for several days. “In fact, I think fear is the biggest obstacle for runners, as it is in many things in life.”
How about the time, as a high school sophomore, he ran from Ramapo to Philadelphia with buddy Jerry Haslam of Suffern to watch the Penn Relays? It took three days and covered almost 150 miles, counting back-tracking and getting lost, and they never even got to witness the meet itself, but that didn’t bother Mike in the least. “For me, it’s never really been about the destination, but always the journey, the road, the adventure, wanting to see what’s around the next turn, or over the next hill. For me, running is really a form of transportation.”
Even his choice of schools reflected his penchant for risk-taking. Over a three-year period he had developed into a premier distance runner at Ramapo High School, especially in cross country, where he finished sixth in the State Class A race as a junior and second in the Rockland County meet behind Suffern ace Mike Hagon. When a looming district-wide austerity budget jeopardized the school’s athletic program after his junior year, Mike heeded the advice of a Ramapo teacher/assistant coach and transferred to Albertus Magnus, the Bardonia-based Catholic high school then renowned for its cross country program.
Making the transition from Ramapo to Albertus was not easy for Mike. The schools were polar opposites in every conceivable way. The respective track and cross country teams exemplified the dichotomy: At Ramapo, Mike would sometimes be the only athlete accompanying Coach Jim Pollard to a meet. At Albertus, he was surrounded by teammates who warmly accepted him into their ranks and asked for nothing more than his best effort. “I really didn’t fit in [at Albertus], outside of the track guys,” he says. “They were great – accepting, open, friendly, but still trying to leave me behind in every practice and race! It was all about the running.”
Mike’s athletic debut at Albertus was inauspicious, to say the least. He suffered from asthma that left him gasping in early-season workouts. A summer car accident resulted in numerous stitches to his forehead, delaying the start of his season and necessitating his wearing a turban-like head wrap for a few meets.
Still, he persevered and rose to the top of the Falcon pecking order, capturing the County and New York State Class B cross country crowns. He led the 1974 Albertus harrier squad – the fabled “Long Red Line” – to County, Section 9, New York State and Eastern States championships, placing sixth in the latter, star-studded field. The team went undefeated, winning four other major invitationals and all of its dual meets, and earned a No. 2 national ranking based on combined time in a 2-mile track run at season’s end.
“I had been second in the County the year before, and felt I should be the best in the county,” he recalls, “but at the beginning of the year at Albertus, I couldn’t even make the varsity. It was humbling. The team was so good. But the guys were so great that even though I was doing poorly individually, I felt part of something great. I did gain confidence week after week, and when the County meet came, I still thought I was the rightful favorite. Winning that race was like vindication for me.”
In the State meet at Sunken Meadow State Park, Mike followed Albertus coach Dick Weis’s strategy to the letter, holding back early on and waiting until the latter stages to take command of the race. “I was very confident at the state meet. The day before the race, Mr. Weis brought me into his office and said, ‘Mike, I don’t usually tell runners how to run a race. I believe they have to learn on their own, but in this case I’m going to tell you what to do, because if you do it, you’ll win.’ He told me what to do, and I did it.”
Mike thus became the third Rocklander in four years to win a state XC title, after Nyack’s Dave Billings in 1971 and Howie McNiff of Albertus in ’72. Nanuet’s Bret Watzka made it four in five years by winning in ’75. In 1999 Mike was permanently ensconced in the hills-and-trails pantheon by being named one of 21 male honorees on the Rockland County All-Century Cross Country Team.
In track, Mike was runner-up in the 1975 New York State indoor mile run, and tacked on three more County titles and four Section 9 gold medals, including relays. His fastest open mile was a 4:19.7 en route to victory in the ’75 outdoor County meet. He split a 4:16 anchoring Albertus’s distance medley at the indoor Easterns at Princeton, and also authored a 1:56 880 split outdoors in the two-mile relay.
Mike feels privileged to have been guided by caring coaches such as Jim Pollard and Dick Weis throughout his high school career. Pollard was “a great coach and a great friend,” the catalyst of a coaching staff that also included assistant Anthony ‘Box” James. Weis was “warm, funny, smart, and a great judge of character,” Mike says. “He had a reputation as a disciplinarian, but he treated each person as an individual.”
Mike went on to Princeton University but his competitive running career was snuffed out by an Achilles heel injury after indoor season his freshman year. He graduated with a degree in religion and, true to his adventuresome spirit, went to live in Japan. He operated a tutorial school in Osaka for seven years, recruiting his teachers from Princeton to teach English to 300 students of all ages. He also expanded to the travel business and arranged educational tours and programs for Japanese people wanting to study or travel overseas.
During his decade-long stay in Japan, Mike got married and started a family. He and his wife of 28 years, Junko, are the parents of son Gino, 26, a Rutgers graduate living and working in Chicago, and daughter Nina, 22, a senior in the School of Public Affairs at Baruch College in Manhattan.
Mike, who is 53, has owned or managed various businesses, mainly in the education and tourism industries, both in Japan and New York. He operated a motor coach company in New York for 10 years, and for the past four years has been a partner with his brother in a public relations company in New York focusing on food, wine and spirits. Many of his customers are from Italy and Japan, as well as the U.S. “I handle the business and finance side,” he says, “while my brother and our 15 employees do all the work!”
He also runs an English-teaching bed & breakfast in Harlem on a part-time basis. “I get visitors from all over the world who come to New York wanting a little more than a usual vacation in a normal hotel.” Mike and his family make their home in Ridgewood, N.J., and he also has a residence at the B&B in Manhattan.
Mike still gets out to run three days a week, logging 15 to 18 miles in a typical week. And he’s got some juice in those legs, turning in a sprightly 5:23 road mile last fall and a 5:19 in 2009. “I’m still in decent shape for an old man,” he jokes. “Still the greatest decision I ever made in my life was to choose running as my sport.”