Rich on Running: Lynn Woods Handicap a throwback to racing history

Never won a trophy in a race before? Well, tonight might be your chance.The Lynn Woods Handicap, created by Joe Abelon over 40 years ago, will take place at the Great Woods Road entrance at 6 p.m. (Donations will be accepted.) It is a 5.5-mile course and runners are sent off in waves, with the slower runners starting first.”People with a little faster pace and a higher handicap go off periodically every minute or two, and the fastest-paced are 25 or 30 minutes after,” organizer Bill Mullen said Tuesday night. “During the course of the event, people start catching up and passing each other. There is a lot of activity the last half-mile or so.”It’s an opportunity for folks who might normally not be in front to perhaps finish first or top-10.”As for the course, while it contains the familiar hills of the reservation, it also features plenty of running on main roads.”It’s on main roads up towards the end of the race,” Mullen said. “(You go up) Steel Tower, which is fairly steep. There are several fairly steep hills. It is mainly main roads. There are better conditions to run a faster-paced race than on single-track trails.”Both Mullen and Abelon described handicap races as a common feature in previous decades of road racing in Lynn and beyond. Both men mentioned the handicap sponsored by Bennie’s Pizza on Franklin Street.Abelon said that the late Fred Brown “would handicap all” the races, and that John J. Kelley “the Younger” of Boston Marathon fame “would always be the scratch runner.” The scratch runner, Abelon explained, has “the last-going time” because they have the best pace.”In its later life, (the Bennie’s Pizza race) was resurrected as a normal race,” Mullen said.Mullen also said he thought there was a handicap race run by the Italian-American Citizens Club on Blossom Street. He said that another handicap, the Marsh Post Handicap in Cambridge, was a warmup before the Boston Marathon.However, he said that these days, “I’m not sure I know of any other handicap races,” although he added, “I don’t necessarily know every race held in New England.”He said that “two, three, four decades ago, there was a fairly small community of runners,” and that it was more or less possible to determine everyone’s handicap. Now, he said, “there is a tremendous amount of runners. You just don’t know (people’s handicaps) based on experience.”For tonight, Mullen will handicap the field based on the past three months of the Lynn Woods Summer Cross Country Races, the weekly jaunts through the Woods that include both short and long races.”I tried to use both short and long,” he said. “If they (people) ran a shorter race, I would apply a guess factor pace in a longer race that would slow them down a small percentage. It’s an approximation. I hope it’s an adequate one. We’ll see how it goes.”Thirty trophies are up for grabs. There are awards for the fastest male and female as well.Mullen noted that “what we’ll try to do is give everybody a corrected time,” adding that “for the race itself,” the finish will be based on who crossed first after the gun went off. However, for “the fastest male and female, we’ll do some math,” he said.Rich Tenorio can be reached at [email protected].