A Fritty Good Day for a Run....or Two

St. Patrick's Day in the Mill City, so naturally, this Patrick had to get his Irish Feet Running, and what better place to do it than at the Patrick Frye Memorial 5K that roams through Lowell's Highlands neighborhood?
The race is in memory of Patrick Frye, whose life was taken way too early, but whose memory lives on in the enormous family that carries on his honor, establishing the race that support a scholarship fund in his name.  It doesn't hurt that Frye, known to his friends as P Fritty, was a member of Clan Durkin, one of Lowell's biggest Irish conglomerates.
Before the start of the race at Mount Pleasant, four of my favorite ladies are all Irish Eyes Smiling

Met up with another Irishman at the starting line, Mike Cassidy, looking a little green under the gills

Two of Josh Simoneau's favorite ladies to watch Jake and the Neverland Pirates with

With the starting gun fired, Patrick Frye's mom and Aunt Mary are making lots of noise to get runners started on the right foot

Heather doesn't look too happy with me here, but appearances can be deceiving

Anyone who grew up in the Highlands knows this landmark.  It's like Lowell's Citgo sign

Heading back into the home stretch, it's a good thing we had uber volunteers like Brennan Cassidy to tell us a la izqierda, otherwise, we'd be lost

See?  Here's Heather taking his advice and making her move

Even after stopping to put her nursing skills to the test live-time on the course, Julie and Patrick's brother Michael were able to stay stride for stride coming into the finish gate

Post-race, Heather hasn't even broken a sweat

And we actually got Brady to look at the camera

The Clan Simoneau

Again, congrats to everyone involved with putting the race together, it was a huge success.  P Fritty would be happy to see so many of his peeps getting together on St. Patrick's Day for a great cause!

From there, though, there was still a couple of more things to do to check off the St. Patrick's Day list, including meeting up with Andrew for the tail end of his 14 mile run through Worcester, Holden and Paxton, including a breathtaking run past the Holden Reservoir

Even Andrew couldn't figure out what kind of tree this was along the route

Babbling brook, meet babbling idiot

And of course, as always, Andrew came out the victor in the town line sprint

Here's what kept the pep in our step:  the corned beef dinner awaiting us at run's end at Mamma's Paxton home

And finally, me and one of my favorite leprechauns, Zachary, complete with a cup of green milk

All in all, yet another St. Patrick's Day for the books, albeit a tad more sedate than the days of yore.  Great runs, great friends, a great cause and a great feedbag to top it off.  Erin go bragh!