The Next Generation of Turkey Trotters

For as long as this blog's been alive (which has been about 15 years, give or take), I've taken the opportunity of a Thanksgiving morning run to give thanks for my circle of family and friends and the opportunity to gather many of them in one place with running being the unifying activity.

And this year was no exception, with a fledgling 5K in Westford's Nabnasset neighborhood serving as the backdrop.  For me, at least, it was also a return to my running roots, but more on that later.

Unfortunately, one of the many activity casualties of the pandemic and the changes it wrought was the 5K from the Lowell Elks, which is no more.  That always gave the E Streeters extended family a gathering point where we could collect and run along the streets of Pawtucketville.

Alas, with that race course now off the table, it was time to find a new course.

And thanks to my niece Brianne who connected through the Greater Lowell Road Runners, we found a delightful start-up 5K in Westford, courtesy of the Peternell family.

But first warm-ups, as in jumping jacks, sort of, Brook.

It's so inspiring to see the Lemay girls embracing the fun of running, and in the meantime, logging some serious mileage and award honors!

Harper may be too young to officially run yet, but damned if she isn't the cutest cheerleader out there!

Again, highest of props to the Peternell family of Lake Shore Drive South in Westford who opened their house, yard, and street to the 50+ runners this cold November morning.

The entry fee for the race?  Donations for the local food pantry!  Bravo!

This Thanksgiving outing also provided the venue for Chewie's first official 5K!

As regular readers know, Chewie has been logging the mileage every weekend with the E Streeters, but today's race gave him the opportunity to compete for reals.

Andrew was nice enough to hang with the Old Man, and the backroads of Westford gave him the opportunity for a great race course selfie.

Great job by Addy, gearing up here for the biggest hill of the course

Chewie is just hitting his stride heading into Mile 2

Heading back to Lake Shore Drive, both by running buddies were starting to leave me in their shadows

Finish line furry fury!

Haley, who's been crushing the long-distance mileage, was a wonderful sister running back out to help push her older sister in with a final burst of speed

Afterwards, we're all envisioning the Thanksgiving feast to come

And Haley will be sure to bring her third-place avocado award to said feast!

As I do every year, I appreciate being able to take this opportunity to give thanks for my family and friends, and being healthy enough to drag my sorry @$$ out there on a cold November morning to log the running miles.

This year's outing spotlighted the up-and-coming generation of runners leaving older runners like me in their dust, and I couldn't be prouder.

Today's race also hearkens back to an important piece of E Streeters running history.

32 years ago, in the summer of 1990, I officially kicked off my running career, other than the annual outing we all previously did for the Hynes 5 miler every March.  But that one doesn't really count, because we ran it in Chuck Taylors and only did it for the party afterwards.

Yep, 32 years ago, John Piekos, Scott Spence and I used to run a four-mile loop from John's house, affectionally called the Lake Run.  Dozens upon dozens upon dozens of houses now occupy the fields and trails we used to run as part of this course, so the original course is in the history books.

But today was a nice throwback to some of our earliest social and athletic gatherings, and I'm proud as hell that the Lemay girls and their friends could experience the exhilaration and satisfaction of running in a group and challenging themselves to always move forward!

Happy Thanksgiving to ALL!

Climbing WaCHEWsett

Every fall, Andrew and I try to squeeze in as many hikes as possible, taking advantage of as many gorgeous New England trails, and mountains as possible, and this, year, a primo textbook fall foliage season, was no exception.

This time, we brought a friend.

Anyone who follows me on any of the other social media platforms knows our two-year-old Cockapoo, Chewie, is quite the outdoor - and athletic - puppy.  He runs with me nearly every weekend, finishes the run, then wants to go for a walk.

So this time out, Andrew and decided to tackle a smaller mountain and bring our 16-pound brown-haired pup along for the outing.  Little did we know it was us who'd be left in Chewie's dust as we climbed Mount Wachusett in Princeton, Mass., just alongside Westminster.

(Mount Wachusett draws its name from a Native American term meaning "near the mountain.")

For many Mays over the last two decades, the E Streeters would take part in a 4/5 mile race up the mountain, and it was quite common for the race course to change from year to year, depending on trail conditions, construction projects, and roadway or trail access.

For this outing, Andrew and I decided to explore the Balance Rock trail option to start, a leg that occasionally served as the finish quarter-mile for the trail race.  Apparently, the boulders of Balance Rock are evidence of glacial activity that shaped the mountain thousands of years ago.

Courtesy of the Princeton Historical Society, here's what the trail path looked like more than a century ago: (the rocks haven't moved, but man, the trees have grown!)

We realized pretty quickly Andrew and I would be no match for Chewie's mountaineering.  He just instinctively knows how to follow a trail, regardless of its twist and turns.

This particular day, we had to contend with some rain.  The temps still hovered near 70, but the rainfall brought with it some fog, especially at the summit, and some slippery footing.

As Chewie scaled the rocks ahead of us, Andrew and I decided to explore the Semuhenna trail.  Now, knowing my late brother Gerald's passion for Native American history, I needed to know the origin of Semuhenna, since I had never heard the word before.  Imagine my surprise/disappointment to find it's the name Anne Humes spelled backwards.  She apparently was the wife of Bob Humes, a trailblazer of the Mid State Trail network.

The whole trail will get you just about four miles, before arriving to the summit, enshrouded this day with a thick, heavy fog.

This particular day, though, thanks to the weather, it also helped keep the population significantly low, giving us almost exclusive access to the trails.

The summit is just over 2,000 feet, so half the size of some of the 4,000 footers Andrew and I have tackled in years past.

Back down at the bottom of the slope, our Chewie bear wanted nothing to do with his distant relatives in the wood-carvings that surround the ski lodge, a popular ski resort in the winter months.

Undaunted by the climb, our intrepid climber, a little wet for the wear, stands ready to head home.  And the four-hour nap that awaits him there.

Chewie joined us in 2021 to scale Rattlesnake Mountain in the White Mountain range.  I'm thinking our four-footed pal is ready to tackle his first 4,000 footer.  Any suggestions from readers?  Chewie awaits your recommendations!

Getting Back

It was 80 years ago today, Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play.  Well, at least 80 years ago today was when one of the members of said band made his debut in this world.  June 18, 1942, Sir Paul McCartney was born in Liverpool, and before his 20th birthday, would join best mate John Lennon to launch, along with George Harrison and Ringo Starr, the most famous quartet in music history.

Regular readers of this blog know that during a 2018 pilgrimage to Liverpool, I was lucky enough to walk (and run) the streets where the Fab Four got their start, during a memory-packed trip to the city along the Mersey.

This month, I, along with more than 30,000 fellow fans of Sir Paul wedged ourselves into the uncomfortable wooden seats at Fenway Park to take in sold-out shows that blended many of McCartney's solo stuff, or as close to solo as his Wings band hits can be considered, along with a healthy dose of oodles of the Beatles' best-known songs, most of which featured McCartney as the frontman on vocals.

Naturally, for McCartney's Get Back tour, I had to show that I Got Back of my own.

A couple of sections away from us sat a couple of gents who've got a healthy archive of music history filed away in their grey matter - my brother Jimmy and Peter Aucella, he of the Lowell Summer Music Series.  These guys were around when Beatlemania first came to the U.S. Shores in 1964, so they've got OG Beatles Street Cred.

Our own version of the Fab Four for this special event

Andrew and Katie were able to take in their first McCartney concert together, a sure-fire recipe for romance.

Fenway shows are a blast, for sure, but it helps having jumbotron video screens that help provide the close-ups for the Living Legend carousing around on the center field stage.

Not surprisingly, some of the Beatles songs were among the highlights of the evening's setlist - Hey Jude, Let It Be, Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, Helter Skelter, and a Quarrymen gem, In Spite of All the Danger to name just a few.

Of particular note, though was McCartney's tribute to bandmate George Harrison, with a ukulele intro'ed Something, one of Harrison's finest;

For me, one of the absolute treasures of the night came courtesy of director Peter Jackson, who compiled the Beatles Get Back documentary series that premiered last fall and chronicled the last live performance of the Beatles, of the rooftop at Saville Row.

Jackson, he of Lord of the Rings fame, told McCartney he could isolate the late John Lennon's vocals to be used to help provide a working duet for McCartney for an emotional and powerful delivery of I've Got A Feeling. So Paul took him up on the offer and has added it to this tour.  Absolutely chilling.

Folks know how much of a Bruce Springsteen fan ye writer is, and how I've followed his concerts wherever I can around these United States.  If you know me, you also know how important the Beatles music was to my earliest years, and how those tunes, too, have followed me throughout my life and helped provide the soundtrack for countless memories.

Add this concert to that memory bank.

To be able to see the 79-year icon known as Paul McCartney deliver a two hour, 40 minute tour-de-force of music royalty is an event that one doesn't soon forget.

God willing, I can make it to the age of 80.  To think that this guy is still belting out these classics and entertaining millions in his SEVENTH DECADE of performing live music is nothing short of humbling and, truly legendary.

Happy Birthday, Paul.  And THANK YOU.

Back to where you once belonged, yeah.

Marathoners of Today - and Tomorrow

April in Boston, and besides the usual dose of renewed optimism that spring always brings, it's also one of the best stretches of time in New England, as it heralds the return of the vaunted Boston Marathon, a favored run of many an E Streeter.

And since it's not just the 26.2 mile course itself that makes for the weekend experience, hitting up the Marathon expo is always a favorite event.  This year, the excursion felt extra special as Heather (2017 Boston Marathon Veteran) and I took along with us two up-and-coming runners, Haley and Brooke Lemay.

Both girls have been logging amazing mileage and clocking personal bests tearing up 5K road races with the Greater Lowell Road Runners.

Their love of running at so young an age is infectious, so we thought this would be a perfect opportunity to have them share the field with thousands of others runners from all over the world.

We started our visit on, of course, Boylston Street, the historic finish line of the most celebrated of marathons in the United States.

Ran into a friend and former colleague Gina Spaziani soaking up the sunlight with her fellow runners in a Boylston Street cafe.

If you're out there on Monday, keep an eye out for Multiple Marathoner Gina, running in yet another consecutive marathon.  She's definitely got the bug, and likely still has many more marathons in her future.  You can track her via her number, 26887.

Our timing at the finish line coincided with the memorial wreath-laying to commemorate the bombings that rocked the finish line nine years prior, so we couldn't get direct access to the finish line itself, and had to settle for pics at a distance.

They're doing it as a dry run rehearsal now, but do not be surprised if both Haley and Brooke are official entrants when they come of qualifying age in about a decade's time.

I have no doubt they'll be crossing that finish line with pride and blazing their own paths through history.

From there it was on the Hynes Convention Center.  We weren't even inside the expo for two minutes when we saw another familiar race, Katie's cousin, Liv Paulo, in full-on expo mode with her mom, Anne.  Watch for her and number 25555 out there on Monday.

Boston Marathoners Past, Present, and I strongly, believe, Future.

Every one who runs Boston knows - hydration is key.

Past Marathon winner Desiree Linden started her prestigious running career with her first steps early in life, and she'd be proud and honored to know she's helping to inspire the female runners of tomorrow.

Kudos also to Kathrine Switzer, the first woman to run this course in 1967, helping set the stage for the thousands of women runners to follow.

Hales and Brooke needed to add their names to the start of the race in historic Hopkinton to wish the 2022 runners good luck.

And the finish as well.

These girls stood tall in Boston.

A detour on our way out let each of the girls take a run at the Hogwarts Sorting Hat.

Guesses on who landed where?

All in all, a tremendously enjoyable day in Boston, and another reminder about why this marathon weekend means so much to runners worldwide.  It's also an affirmation of how important this race has become to the fabric of New England life, another passage of spring.

And this year, it meant the next generation of runners got a taste of the excitement, the history, and the spectacle of the Boston Marathon.  Hopefully, a future blog post will chronicle Haley and Brooke's 26.2 mile journey.  Stay tuned.....