Hockey takes local massage therapist around the country — again - CT Post

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In the summer of 1976, tying the nations bicentennial to reawakening the country’s spiritual values,Jim Miccio and about 30 other young men set out on a cross-country relay run through the 48 contiguous states. One of those young men, Ken (Mohan) Peck, right, receives a fruit basket in one of the many towns that gave them gifts along the route. Jim Miccio is to the town resident’s immediate left. less
In the summer of 1976, tying the nations bicentennial to reawakening the country’s spiritual values,Jim Miccio and about 30 other young men set out on a cross-country relay run through the 48 contiguous ... more
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Jim Miccio is writing new songs and recording them in a Bethel studio.

Jim Miccio is writing new songs and recording them in a Bethel studio.

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Unable to justify keeping eight boxes of T-shirts from the races he has run over his life (including 26 marathons), Jim Miccio is learning how to quilt, cutting out the best logos and putting them together.

Unable to justify keeping eight boxes of T-shirts from the races he has run over his life (including 26 marathons), Jim Miccio is learning how to quilt, cutting out the best logos and putting them together.

Photo: Contributed Photo

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Jim Miccio, left, runs with the torch. The members of each team — blue and red— would run about 20 miles each, 250 miles a day, in shifts, while the other team rode ahead to rest up to take over the next day. less
Jim Miccio, left, runs with the torch. The members of each team — blue and red— would run about 20 miles each, 250 miles a day, in shifts, while the other team rode ahead to rest up to take over the next ... more
Photo: Contributed Photo

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Runners follow the torch. “It was young men trying to do something uplifting for the country,” Jim Miccio said.

Runners follow the torch. “It was young men trying to do something uplifting for the country,” Jim Miccio said.

Photo: Contributed Photo

Hockey takes local massage therapist around the country — again


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NEW CANAAN — One thing seems to have led him to another throughout his life, and now at 66, Jim Miccio seems to have memories of all of them coming back around.

There’s the music that has again become a part of his life. There’s the running that took him across the country — literally — 40 years ago, which led him to massage, which will take him to the World Cup of Hockey in September.

“I don’t feel 66,” said Miccio, who grew up in Milford, lives in Stratford and also has a condo here. He doesn’t look 66, either.

He said he’s planning five more years before he retires from the New York Islanders, for whom he’s been the massage therapist ever since he got promoted a decade ago from the Bridgeport Sound Tigers.

On Sept. 2, he’ll be off to Quebec City with Team Europe, a team made up of players from countries that don’t have a team of their own in the eight-team tournament.

“Obviously, the Islanders connections made it for me,” Miccio said.

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ON A WORLD STAGE

Locally tied athletes and support staff who’ll take part in the World Cup in Toronto in September:

Team USA

F Max Pacioretty (New Canaan)

G Jon Quick (Milford/Hamden/Greenwich)

Assistant coach Jack Capuano (former Sound Tigers coach)

Public relations staffer Kimber Auerbach (former Sound Tigers game operations and PR director)

Team Finland

G Mikko Koskinen (former Sound Tiger)

Team Europe

F Frans Nielsen (former Sound Tiger)

F Nino Niederreiter (former Sound Tiger)

Massage therapist Jim Miccio (Stratford/New Canaan, former Sound Tigers therapist)


There are three exhibition games, then three games in the preliminary round of the tournament.

Fall will bring him back to hockey, but he has taken time this summer to reflect on and continue some of his other passions. He’s actually working on a book about them: “It’s All About the M’s,” Miccio says, including music, marriage, marathons and massage.

He has saved many mementos of each. Unable to justify keeping eight boxes of T-shirts from the races he has run over his life (including 26 marathons), he’s learning how to quilt, cutting out the best logos and putting them together. (He jokes that he’ll be able to help out Islanders equipment manager Scott Boggs on the sewing machine during the season.)

He has a picture of him with a Les Paul guitar at age 8; he got back in touch with the men he played with in a band, “4 O’Clock,” around 1970 at the Hartford Conservatory, and the experience has inspired him to write new songs. He’s recording them at Mother Brother Studios in Bethel with New Canaan’s Matt Vitti.

And then there’s the huge old scrapbook with a white cover, full of newspaper clippings from down the block (there’s one from the old Bridgeport Sunday Post) and around the country.

Cross-country relay

In the summer of 1976, tying the nation’s bicentennial to reawakening the country’s spiritual values, he and about 30 other young men set out on a cross-country relay run through the 48 contiguous states.

“The country rolled out the red carpet,” Miccio said. “There was something about that torch, that big, red torch.”

The Liberty Torch Run began in New York, ran through New England quickly, then down through the south and out to San Francisco, clipping the corners of some states to get to them all. They turned north and then east through the southeast corner of Washington state, running across the northern states back to Washington, D.C.

Miccio did it with several people he knew, like Mohan Peck, who grew up with Miccio in Milford (and then went by his middle name, Ken) and now lives in North Stamford.

“Looking back on my life, it’s probably the greatest experience of my life,” Peck said. “I’m 64 years old. I played just about every sport. It was an expression of absolute freedom. I was 24 years old with 30 other guys running across the country, with no worries, during the Bicentennial.”

Miccio was on the red team; there was also a blue team. They each had a motor home for the runners, a van to carry fuel for the torches, and a point car.

The members of each team — “teachers, carpenters, clerks, grad students, cooks, musicians and professors,” read the tour’s brochure — would run about 20 miles each, 250 miles a day, in shifts, while the other team rode ahead to rest up to take over the next day. They had an itinerary, and they had to stick with it, with dignitaries waiting.

“I had to practice with a stick,” Miccio said, to get the posture and running style right for the torch. “It was tough. If you tilted it, the fuel poured out.

“The hardest thing was being dead tired, and you had to drive the van.”

On one stretch, cutting states’ corners to go from Oregon to Washington to Idaho, Miccio recalled picking up time for an ill teammate and running 38 miles in a day.

At one point, five people joined in behind him, then another five, then 10 more, and then he was leading a big pack.

“It was like ‘Forrest Gump,’” Miccio said.

Peck said a couple drove the route two or three days ahead of the runners to to talk to the town’s bicentennial committee and let people know they were coming.

“One time we got an ice-cream social. Another, the chamber of commerce gave us a gift basket,” Peck said. “In a corner of Wyoming, at 3 o’clock at night, people had lined one mile of highway with (luminarias).”

The teams collected soil from all 50 states (sending Sam Mills of Norwalk to Alaska, where he ran 10 miles and climbed Mount McKinley, and another runner to Hawaii) and planted it under a spruce tree near the Washington Monument. One last relay leg brought them back to New York, where Mayor Abe Beame wanted to give them a parade.

“It was young men trying to do something uplifting for the country,” Miccio said.

Miccio recently met up with some of the runners, including Mills and Peck, for a camping trip in upstate New York.

“We’re from the same hometown. We even dated the same girl at different points in time,” Peck said of Miccio. “He’s my older brother’s age. He’s a sweet guy. It’s amazing, he’s still a good runner. I wish I could, still.

After his run across the nation, Miccio wanted to run the New York City marathon, which was being run across all five boroughs that year for the first time.

‘Muscle work’

“I never made an effort to get ‘muscle work,’ as they called massage then,” Miccio said.

Norb Sander, who had won the marathon in Central Park in 1972, directed Miccio to “this guy named Serge,” who turned out to be a defected Soviet therapist for their track and field and weightlifting teams.

Miccio said he made a $30 appointment and walked into “Serge”’s loft near Central Park, which was empty save for a massage table. Miccio was 5-10 and about 120 pounds; the therapist was 6-7, around 300 pounds. “I had these legs like pepperoni sticks,” Miccio recalled with a laugh. “Still do.”

He got treatment for an hour. “When I got off the table, it was so profound, I thought I had a new pair of legs.

“It hurt like hell, I was carrying so much tension. Your hamstring should have a ninety-degree range of motion; I barely had 45. He said, ‘Jim, you seem to have a passion,’ in this broken English. “If you want to have any longevity, make stretching and muscle work just as important as running, and you’ll see a big difference.”

He was converted, and about 25 years ago, he decided to change careers and become a massage therapist. A decade later, he met Garrett Timms, who was the trainer for the Sound Tigers, the new AHL team in town.

“He said, can you give me a massage? We got 15 minutes in, and he said, when can you start?” Miccio said.

The sport has taken him, again, around the country, a country he saw as a young man running 10, 20 or 30 miles of it at a time, looking to lift the country’s spirit.

“We could use a little like that the way the country is going,” Miccio said. “Be kind to each other.”

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