I had leg 1 for the Mill Cities Relay race: 5 runner relay
from Nashua, NH along the Merrimack River, finishing up in Lawrence. 27 miles, 5 legs, 2 states, 1 river is the
deal here. This is a fun event as it is a great team event of the 19 running
clubs that take part. The Somerville Road Runners put some time and effort into
this and it is hard not to take part in the fun. I was fortunate enough to get
onto a men’s masters team. I got a good
clean start and tried to determine who else was a master runner. My goal was to
be as close as possible to the lead for the category after my 5.5 mile leg. I
was running either in front of or behind fellow yellow SRR Kyle Pochini most of
the way.
Two runners went past me after 2.5 miles. The first was a
GLRR runner who clipped my heels twice followed by apologies. He followed to
crush the 2nd half of the leg. The other was a woman from WRT who
held me off by 10 seconds or so in the end. I finished up with a time of 33:10,
5:55 per mile pace for the 5.6 that my Garmin captured. I am not certain but
think I was in the top 3 for the master category after leg 1. I handed off to
Sanjay D’Souza who ran 6:15’s for leg 2.
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| Dan Verrington, Dave Dunham, Joe OLeary, and Kieran at the boat house in Lowell (3rd exchange zone) |
Kieran Condon and Jason Lachapelle were there at the
exchange waiting for me. We drove to the next exchange zone along the course
cheering on the runners of all teams. We dropped Jason off for his leg 3 (2.5
miles) and then drove to the boat house in Lowell where Kieran got warmed up
and ready for leg 4. I snapped a few photos and caught up with some folks. It
was nice to be a spectator. Jason came in and handed off to Kieran. Sanjay was
cooling down from the finish of his leg over to us so we finally got in the car
and I drove us along leg 4. We watched
an epic battle between Kieran and Todd Prokop who had made up a 45 second
deficit. They battled after 3 miles into the leg 4 all the way to the exchange
zone. I am glad I got photos of that. 545’s for Todd on that leg is solid. I am
sure it pushed Kieran as well. He handed off to Eric Ahearn. Our team did not
know what place we were in for the masters.
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| Todd Prokop and Kieran battling during the long leg |
Once Kieran cooled down we got in the car and drove along
the course to the finish. Eric had moved up several places. He passed Dave Long
from Wicked in the process who was on a masters team. I am not sure if he
passed the AARC masters team but his strong finish put our team on top in the
end by a minute and seven. Pretty close! We got the brick at the awards ceremony
at the Claddagh Pub which was cool. Below are the top four masters teams. Our
team finished 10th overall in the Mill Cities Relay. Full results.
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| Sanjay, Kieran, Eric, I, and Jason |
10 207 SRR - 40'S
THE NEW 20
SRR MM JIM PAWLICKI SANJAY D'SOUZA JASON LACHAPELLE KIERAN CONDON ERIC AHERN 2:41:22
12 7 VAYA CON
DIOS
AARC MM MIKE VEILLEUX JAMES PORTER MIKE PORTER CHRIS BERNIER CHRIS CLAPP 2:42:29
13 328 WICKED
REPETITIVE
WRC MM JASON MATULEWICZ BRETT RICKENBACH CHRIS NOLIN JOHN AYERS DAVE LONG 2:42:42
21 173 NMC MASTER'S
MACHINE NMC MM
ED CHARTIER KEVIN
CAVANAUGH KEN CARABBA ART BESSE JOSH CURTIS 2:51:01
My Mill Cities splits below. I raced almost 2 minutes slower
than last year where I ran leg one with a 5:41 pace.
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| Kieran, Jason, Sanjay, and I |
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