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A Litigator Who Likes To Go The Extra Miles

At 65, Kenny ‘The Kid’ finds inspiration in marathon running

By DOUGLAS S. MALAN

Kenneth Rosenthal spent a recent Sunday morning on Staten Island milling about in the chilly weather with thousands of other people before being herded into a corral with hardly room to move. It was the start of one of the most memorable days of his life.

“There were all these people from all over the world, and it was so exciting,” said Rosenthal, a commercial litigator at Brenner, Saltzman & Wallman in New Haven.

That was the scene just before Rosenthal and the others started the New York City Marathon on Nov. 1.

Rosenthal, who turned 65 in September, decided earlier this year that running in the world’s signature marathon event would be his birthday present to himself. He got quite a treat.

Family and friends lined the streets to cheer him on, and hundreds of other spectators shouted encouraging words at him as he ran by with a shirt that read, “Kenny The Kid 65.”

He said the most powerful sight was coming off of the Queensboro Bridge into the packed streets of Manhattan.

“It was such a wonderful experience,” Rosenthal said. “I felt like Tiger Woods with the gallery cheering him. I felt like I was some kind of celebrity.”

And Rosenthal is ready for more. You won’t find him gorging on huge turkey dinners and sweets around the holidays; rather, he’ll be gearing up his training schedule for his next big event—the Boston Marathon next spring.

Running has become a serious hobby for Rosenthal over the past decade. When he and his wife moved from New Haven to Woodbridge about 10 years ago, Rosenthal found the woodsy surroundings to be a perfect backdrop for jogging and an antidote for the stresses that build up at work.

With encouragement from co-workers and friends in the bar, he steadily became a more active runner, first competing in local 10K and 20K races before branching out to compete in half-marathons. Last October, he ran his first 26.2-mile race in the Hartford Marathon. “When I did Hartford, I got hooked,” Rosenthal said.

This past spring, he ran his second marathon in Burlington, Vt., and finished with a fast enough time in his age group to qualify for Boston. He was about 15 minutes short of qualifying for New York’s marathon, but managed to get in through a runner’s lottery.

That’s where he joined 40,000 other runners, though only about 330 of them were in his 65 to 69 age group.

His time of 3 hours and 56 minutes placed him in the top 10 percent of his group and the top third of runners overall.

“I’ve started paying more attention to my times, and I can tell I’m getting faster,” Rosenthal said.

Time To Think

But there’s more to running than just the time-keeping, Rosenthal said. He has worked out plenty of litigation challenges in his head when he’s out pounding the pavement.

“There have been a lot of times when I’m running that ideas come to me in a creative way and I write them down and use them in a deposition,” he said. “The things you think about when you run are very helpful.”

Rosenthal, who has never played a team sport, said running has become his primary activity in the evening, on the weekends and during lunch breaks at work , especially when he’s training for a race. He’ll log about 40 to 50 miles a week for about 18 weeks leading up to a marathon.

“The process of training for a marathon is a good lesson about life, not just running,” said Rosenthal, noting the grind of the process and the muscle soreness.

And he sees a parallel to his law practice: “Litigation is an endurance test itself.”

Part of Rosenthal’s training process involves improving his muscle strength in the gym about three times a week. At his age, Rosenthal said the muscle development has been important to being able to finish races, and he’s been fortunate to avoid knee injuries that have ended the running days for many of his friends.

But that doesn’t make running any easier as the seasons change from autumn to winter. Rosenthal, who said he despises running on a treadmill, insists that all of his training take place outside. “I’ve learned to run in cold weather, and my next training schedule will go right through the coldest months,” Rosenthal said. “I’ve heard that’s the hardest part about training for the Boston Marathon.” •