February 12th - Fudgcicle 5K Series - Tewksbury, MA - 6.5

It is Saturday morning and any Good Looking Greater Lowell Road Runner knows what that means . . . That's right! The weekly Fudgcicle 5K at Tewksbury Memorial High School. This was by far the hardest race I have ever had in terms of getting out of bed for. I almost missed this race due to my laziness! "YOU WANT DELI [QUEEN] KING" I told myself as I forced myself out of bed and out the door to my freezing car.

I made it down to Tewksbury and got in a short warm-up before making my way to the starting line. The usual characters were there once again this week. Jess, Linda, Fil, Jason, Frank G., Mark, Scott, Dave T., Dave P., Karen, Marli, and many many more!

We all gathered at the starting line at 8 AM and waited for the G-O word to be said. Before you knew it, we were off! I had decided to run a comfortable 7 min./mile pace this week (approximately anyway).

Fil and I were together for the first mile or so until Fil decided that he was going to try to pursue Dave Penn who was a good 50+ yards ahead of us at about 1.25 miles. Fil slowly crept up on Dave P. like he was stalking him like prey. I didn't pursue as I wanted to try to maintain a pace.

At about mile 2.5 I decided that I would push a little harder to see if I too cold catch up. Unfortunately, I gave chase a little late in the game and knew I couldn't catch them as they were about 100 yards ahead of me with 0.1 mile to go. I finished the race strong before going back out for a cool down loop with a handful of runners.

After cooling down, we made our usual appearance at the Deli "Queen" King and had breakfast together. This was after all, the reason I got out of bed this morning. During breakfast, we made plans for tomorrow's long run.

It was another great day of running and as Joe Ferris always says "Gotta Run!"

(And these Turkey's were the ones calling us "turkeys" this morning)

Photo Credit: Steve Moland