The CT Softball Blog

WILLIMANTIC—Softball players are accustomed to running 60 feet at a time.

Maybe 120 feet on a double, 180 on a triple, or 240 if they’re fortunate enough to circle the bases for a home run.

Twenty-six point two miles?

That’s a whole different ballgame.

Just ask Eastern Connecticut State University senior Reagan Lalor, a former Danbury High School standout who recently traded her softball cleats for running shoes and accomplished something she couldn’t have imagined doing just 18 months ago.

On Sunday, Oct. 25, Lalor completed the Ocean State Road Races Marathon in Narragansett, R.I., crossing the finish line in four hours and seven minutes.

Not bad for somebody who couldn’t even run a mile when she first decided to give distance running a try.

“I just got out of bed one day and was like, ‘Well, I’m going to go to the track and try and go for a run,’” Lalor recalled. “And I just couldn’t even run anything. And I was like, ‘Well, I just don’t like that. I can’t really run.’”

That was May 2025, toward the end of her junior year at Eastern.

Lalor wasn’t a cross country runner in high school. She wasn’t a track athlete, either. In fact, while she played softball, basketball and volleyball at Danbury, distance running was never really on her radar.

She simply figured that, as a college athlete, she ought to be able to run more than a mile without stopping.

“I felt like I should be able to run more than half a mile,” she said. “I didn’t get out of bed and say, ‘Yeah, I’m going to be able to run 26 miles.’ I just wanted to be able to run three or something and then it just turned crazy, I guess.”

Crazy enough to run a marathon.

But first, there were a few smaller steps to take.

Lalor spent the summer of 2025 building up her endurance with help from her uncle, an experienced marathon runner who became something of a running mentor.

By October of 2025, she was ready for her first half marathon, a 13.1-mile race in Ridgefield that she ran alongside him.

She put her running shoes aside during Eastern’s spring softball season, but when the Warriors’ season ended, she discovered she missed running.

So she signed up for another half marathon in June.

Two half marathons down.

Why not go for the whole thing?

“I was just like, ‘I should just do more. Why not just do another, a big one pretty much?’” Lalor said.

She began training in August, giving herself approximately 14 weeks to prepare for a distance many runners spend 20 weeks or more getting ready to tackle.

And she quickly learned that running two half marathons doesn’t necessarily mean you’re prepared to run one full marathon.

“Yeah, it’s just two halves put together, but the second half was double the effort, double the pain,” she said. “It was just crazy.”

Still, she was determined to find out what she could do.

That determination doesn’t surprise those who knew her long before she became a marathoner.

“Reagan was always the type of player to take on challenges,” said Chris Martin, her former travel softball coach with the Rapids Softball organization. “There wasn’t a pitcher throwing hard that would scare her off or a position we would put her in that she didn’t feel confident.”

Martin, a former Nonnewaug High School coach who is now an assistant at Post University, admitted he didn’t know Lalor was training for a marathon.

But when he saw that she’d completed one, he immediately reached out to congratulate her.

“It doesn’t surprise me that she would challenge herself to do so,” Martin said.

Mark Anderson, who coached Lalor during her senior season at Danbury High School, remembers a similarly determined young woman.

“She was always very athletic and very skilled and she was very determined,” Anderson said. “So if she put her mind to it, I could see her doing that.”

Anderson recalled Lalor as his starting shortstop, a team captain and a player who made those around her better.

“She was a leader of the team, captain, was always helping the younger players out,” he said. “She was a very good competitor, very fierce competitor. Could always rely on her.”

Even the coaches who have known her during her career at ECSU recognized something about her.

“Reagan sets her mind to something will go after it,” said former Eastern coach Diana Pepin, who retired after last season. “I’m not surprised she took on this challenge. She loves to compete.”

Amber Maisonet is ECSU’s new coach, having replaced Pepin this summer. She may not know Lalor as well yet, but she’s certainly seen her compete over the course of Eastern’s fall ball season.

“In the short time I’ve known Reagan, I’ve learned she is competitive and always pushing to succeed,” Maisonet said. “It takes immense drive and determination to complete a marathon. I am extremely proud of Reagan for demonstrating those qualities and accomplishing something so difficult.”

Those competitive instincts came in handy when Lalor stood at the starting line in Narragansett, facing the longest athletic challenge of her life.

She admits she was terrified.

“The night before I just couldn’t sleep at all,” she said. “I probably was running on three hours of sleep because I had to wake up at 4:30 that morning.”

Lalor worried about everything that could possibly go wrong, including whether she’d be able to finish.

Then came the national anthem.

“I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is so real. I can’t believe I’m about to do this,’” she said.

And just like that, she was off.

Unlike the massive New York City Marathon, which attracts tens of thousands of runners, the Narragansett race featured a relatively small marathon field of approximately 400 competitors.

Lalor had deliberately chosen a smaller event, joking that she wanted to run somewhere she wouldn’t know many people in case things didn’t go well.

Her family, however, was there to support her, and a friend participated in the half marathon.

For much of the race, Lalor concentrated on one simple objective.

Finishing.

She wasn’t concerned about setting a particular time. After all, this was her first marathon, so whatever time she posted would automatically become a personal record.

“I just kept telling myself all I had to do was finish,” she said. “I wasn’t even worried about a time goal because any time would’ve been a PR.”

Then came the final five or six miles.

And the infamous wall marathon runners talk about.

Lalor had heard about it, of course. She just wasn’t entirely convinced it was real.

Until she hit it.

“Oh my goodness, it was very real,” she said. “And I ate five bananas, drank a ton of water in those last five miles. I really thought my legs were going to give out.”

Five bananas.

That’s a lot of potassium.

But somehow, some way, Lalor kept putting one foot in front of the other.

And eventually, the finish line came into view.

“It was so awesome,” she said. “I think I was really out of it though. As soon as I crossed, I just needed to sit down and then it really hit me what I did.”

Her parents were there. Her friend was there.

And, perhaps most importantly after 26.2 miles, there was pizza.

“They had Domino’s pizza at the finish line, so that was great too,” Lalor said with a laugh.

For Lalor, the accomplishment represents more than a finishing time or a medal.

It also comes at an interesting crossroads in her athletic life.

She’s preparing for her final softball season at Eastern, where she has developed into a versatile utility player, spending time at the corner infield positions, in the outfield and potentially at second base this spring.

Softball has been part of her life since she was five years old, taking her from the Danbury Storm to the Connecticut Seahawks, the Rapids and eventually Eastern.

And she’s not quite ready to say goodbye.

“I’m very emotional,” she admitted. “Even after our first practice of the fall season, we were like, ‘Wow, it’s our last first practice.’”

Lalor is double-majoring in early childhood education and developmental psychology and hopes to remain at Eastern for graduate school before becoming a teacher. She’s also interested in coaching softball someday.

But while one athletic chapter is nearing its conclusion, another may only be beginning.

She plans to keep running and knows another marathon is somewhere in her future, although she may wait a year before tackling the distance again.

Boston? New York?

Both are on her wish list.

So is a destination marathon, perhaps even one in South Africa.

She’s also considered triathlons or a half Ironman.

“I don’t know when, I don’t know where,” she said. “I’m all over the place kind of.”

One thing she does know is that softball helped make all of this possible.

“If I wasn’t an athlete, I don’t think this running would have even been a thing of mine,” Lalor said. “It’s all thanks to sports.”

Eighteen months ago, Reagan Lalor walked onto a track at Eastern Connecticut State University and discovered she couldn’t run a mile.

Today, she’s a marathon finisher.

And while her softball career may be entering its final innings, it’s safe to say her running journey is just getting started.

One step at a time.

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