Mill Cities Relay 2018
Couple Sunday’s ago, I raced the Mill Cities Relay for probably the 21st or 22nd time with my running club. It went well but there were some interesting wrinkles that are worth talking about and that we might learn something from.
The biggest difference this year was that I had a lot of time to get ready for my leg, due to logistics.
Our club has the same problem as a lot of social clubs – we are greying out. We have no problem filling competitive teams in the over-50, or even over 60 age groups. We are challenged in finding younger runners.
I asked my youngest, Teresa, if she wouldn’t mind coming up and running on a team to help us out. She said she could but had to get back right after.
We cooked up a plan for me to retrieve her from her apartment in Boston Saturday night and get up early for the pre-race meeting Sunday morning in Groton.
The challenge now was how to get her back to Boston.
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The relay is a five-leg relay that runs down the Merrimack River from Nashua NH to Lawrence MA. It runs through Nashua, Dracut, Lowell, Methuen and Lawrence. These are the mill cities. In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s this river, the Merrimack, powered many large textile mills in these places. Many of which still exist as hulking red brick reminders of our heavy industrial past.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, the budding labor movement in the early 1900’s made some unreasonable demands, like you couldn’t have a 9-yearold working on the machinery, or you didn’t have to work 7 days a week 14 hours a day, or the management couldn’t drop your wages when the commodity prices went down – things like that.
All the mills packed up and went south to the Carolinas where the attitude was a bit more forgiving and the unions didn’t exist. Eventually they all moved overseas to places in Asia.
We were left with a dirty river, a depressed regional economy, and a bunch of sturdy buildings of red-brick and steel that would burn down spectacularly every once in a while.
Most of the mills have been converted now and the area is relatively stable and striving. It’s still a relatively ‘low rent’ region of Massachusetts. It has a very high immigrant population due to the availability over the years of cheap housing left over from the mill towns. It’s culturally interesting and vibrant.
The best thing in my mind is that the river has recovered. I run along it many days now and it’s a beautiful broad river. I watch the river as I run, a living, breathing thing with immense power.
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Being a logistics and optimization expert, I figured out how to make all the connections work so I could get Both Teresa and I to our legs and get her back to Boston.
We would go to the early morning meetup in Groton. I would drop Teresa with her team. I would retrieve my bib number and meet my team at the start of my leg. Teresa would drive my truck to the end of my leg to meet me and then we would drive back to Boston.
This arrangement was made possible because Teresa was running the short leg for her team, Leg 3, and I was running the long leg for my team, leg 4. Usually I would be running a good bit faster than Teresa, but that evened out as well. She was on a faster young team, and I was on a relatively pedestrian mixed senior team.
But, let’s be clear. She has a long way to go to catch me!
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How to make Red Pepper Coconut Shrimp & Spinach Curry
Shrimp Marinade
- 12-14 large shrimp, deveined and shelled
- 1½ tablespoon fresh lemon juice
- sprinkle of cayenne pepper
- pinch of salt and pepper
Sauce
- 2 tablespoons vegetable oil (if using a non-stick pan, just use 1 tablespoon)
- 1 medium onion, diced
- 1 red bell pepper, diced
- 2 teaspoons minced garlic
- 2 teaspoons fresh minced ginger
- 1½ teaspoons ground coriander
- ¾ teaspoon curry powder
- ¼ teaspoons+ ⅛ teaspoon turmeric
- 1 14 ounce can diced tomatoes with juice
- 1 teaspoon honey
- 1 14 ounce can full fat unsweetened coconut milk
- Salt and pepper to taste
Large handful of spinach
Cooked rice for serving
Clean the shrimps and toss them in the marinade in a bowl. Toss the onions and garlic into a big skillet and Sautee. Add the ginger and stir it in. Add the rest of the spices and the tomatoes and red peppers. Simmer for a bit and add the coconut milk. Add the shrimp and cover. Throw in the spinach. It’s done when the shrimp turn pink and the spinach is cooked. Serve over rice.
It’s a restaurant-quality Thai dish. I think it would be awesome with some fresh basil.
Did I mention I’m on a ‘diet’? Not really a diet, more of a strategic, clean eating session. I’ve also been teaching myself how to cook. I declared Friday nights to be cooking nights in my house and each week I attempt something. If you can cook it in a cast-iron skillet it’s right in my wheelhouse.
I’m avoiding my normal beer and pizza pogrom that I typically embark on after my fall race and through the holidays. I’m going to see if it helps to go into my spring training cycle light and healthy as opposed to heavy and polluted.
I mention this because one of the aspects of the Mill Cities Relay is it is the end of season celebration for all the local running clubs. True to form for our local runners the relay ends in a bar, where we usually get stuck for a few hours drinking beer and merry making.
Which, don’t get me wrong, drinking beer and merry making with all my running buddies from across the region is one of my favorite things, but it runs a bit counter to the healthy nutrition strategy.
Now, having to take Teresa back to the city, gave me a credible excuse to skip the party!
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I had around 3 hours to waste. The meetup was at 6:00 AM. I dropped Teresa with her team, checked in with my team. It was hovering in the mid to high 40’s and drizzling cold rain. We stood around in the rain a bit and then I hit the road.
Based on the paces and start times I had a lot of time to kill. The race starts at 8:00. The first two legs are 5-6 miles and the 3rd leg is a short 2.5. That estimate put them into the start of my leg at around 9:45 – 10:00. So I went to Starbucks, filled up on coffee and read the New York Times. That killed an hour.
I was fairly wet and chilled form the morning cold shower. I had worn a jacket that I thought was waterproof. Turns out it wasn’t. My race gear was dry, but my standing around gear was wet and it was still raining hard and cold. So I ran across the street to Walmart and picked up a 12 dollar sweatshirt, some warm socks and a 2 dollar fleece blanket for after the race.
I made my way over to the transition zone, trading texts with Teresa and my team to make sure everything was synchronized.
Usually this is a hard leg to race because you get slammed into it cold. If you’re in the car with your team you don’t have much time. You launch your 2.5-mile runner, collect your leg 2 runner and drive to the transition area.
It doesn’t take long to run 2.5 miles so you’re always in a rush to make the handoff. No time to warm up or stretch or anything. Jump out of the car and hit the river trail and hope to warm up somewhere along the way on your 9.5-mile leg 4 jaunt.
Not this year. I was able to get a parking space right next to the transition. I was able to use the porta pottie as many times as I liked. And I was able to run a 20 minute warm up.
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It was still pouring rain as I suited up and got my final race kit on. People were having Boston flashbacks. But it wasn’t as cold or as windy as Boston. Just a steady cold rain and a lot of deep puddles on the course.
Teresa finished as I was waiting for my runner to come in. We made the exchange and she began her adventure of trying to drive my standard truck out to the next transition point.
My runner cam in and I started my adventure of pounding out 9.5 miles in the rain.
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My legs have been cooked since October. I just can’t hold the tempo paces or race paces that I could hold this time last year. Something happened. After the 100 miler I felt great. My threshold test showed that I had great aerobic capacity. Then I threw in some speed work for Baystate and apparently that pushed me over the edge into over-trained and I lost my legs. I’ve been fighting to get them back ever since.
For this race I was deploying the same strategy that I used in the Thanksgiving 5K; just go out, run hard and take what the race gave me, and not worry about it.
True to form it hurt. Even with the good warm up my legs were dead. I just ran to that edge and tried to stay on it. I practiced a fair amount of form skills and pacing mantras. The good news was that because I was on a slower team, even as I was struggling, I passed over 20 runners. It felt like I was running with cement shoes but I cam in around 7:47 per mile. Which is pretty slow for me. But I’ll take it.
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I beat the 11:00 cut off for the sunshine start. That’s where, for the last leg, if your runner doesn’t show up by 11:00 they send everyone who’s left. Felt like I worked hard. Was sore the next day.
Happy enough to be still out there and still getting to both the start and the finish successfully but I do hope I come out of this current ditch by Boston. That’s why I’m trying to get the nutrition right to see if it helps my recovery.
Teresa found me. I through my dry $12 hoodie on and we trekked back into the city to drop her off.
A successfully executed day.