Stride right

LYNN – Above you is a clear blue summer sky on a Wednesday night. Your footsteps cross the pavement of the Lynn Woods parking lot. You pass Gannon Golf Course on your left and the Wyoma Little League softball field on the right. Ahead of you, at the end of the parking lot, is Joe Abelon?s signature 1988 GMC truck … and in the distance, waiting for you and every other runner tonight, is the first hill. Welcome to the Lynn Woods Summer Cross Country Races.Begun in 1969, the races are in their 44th year and have become an institution in Lynn and beyond. Runners show up to compete in several different races: short (usually 2-plus miles), long (between about 4-6 miles) and junior high (1.59 miles). There is also a Peewee Quarter Mile. All races are free except for the annual relay.You?ve figured out which race you want to run, and check off your name on the list of runners posted on the side of Abelon?s truck. It?s time to pin your bib number to your shirt (Abelon, who founded the races in 1969, says that “now, when we hand a person a number, this is your number for life”). Maybe it?s time to stretch, or to say hi to some fellow runners, or both.It?s shortly before 6:30 p.m. and race director Bill Mullen of Peabody, who has been organizing these races for about 30 years, walks toward the starting line. You?re doing the short race, and so you get to see the first wave of runners assemble, because your race starts five minutes after theirs, at 6:35 p.m., a change instituted this year. You watch those long-race runners power off up that first hill as Mullen clangs his cowbell, another staple of the Woods races.?When Bill says it?s time to start, I jump out of the truck and call the long race,” Abelon said. “Three hundred people gather. I don?t know where they are the last 10 minutes (before the race started).”Now you and hundreds of fellow runners are toeing the asphalt. In front lies one of the most beautiful, and most arduous, running venues in the City of Lynn: the Lynn Woods Reservation. The seconds tick off.Three … two … one … clang-clang-clang!After the cowbellThe above paragraphs are more or less what happens at Lynn Woods on a Wednesday night run (although the start times have now changed from 6:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. to accommodate for shrinking daylight hours). It takes a lot of planning and involves a lot of challenge and enjoyment, for runners and organizers alike.?I look forward to Wednesday nights,” Abelon said. “It?s just fun to do that stuff, see how big the fields are.”On June 24, there were 324 finishers, a record. Last Wednesday, there were 110 teams in the 44th annual 10-Mile Relay, also a record.?(We get) a lot of Lynn people, a lot of other locals,” Mullen said about turnout in general. “People come to like trail racing, off-road racing. They find us and become regulars in a long period of time … The deal seems to be that once you become a regular, you?re there most of the weeks.”The summer cross country racing season begins in the last Wednesday in May and extends to the last Wednesday in September, with a postscript being the Stone Tower 5K and 15K on Oct. 15.About the routesWell, on Aug. 14, the long run was “only” 4.3 miles, but it included the difficult Undercliff Trail. Let Lynn runner Jim Pawlicki, who won the race in 30:36, a 7:07 mile pace, explain a bit more about that part of the course:?It?s technically frustrating,” Pawlicki said. “You have to watch what you step in, or you?ll turn an ankle.”Some of the races have their subplots. Pawlicki called this one a race he “won but didn?t win.?I was definitely in fourth place as far as I can tell. Up the hill after the start, I counted three people in front. Bill Jackson, Greg Esbitt (and myself) went through the course and ran together through the Undercliff Trail. After a mile and a half, we got back to the finish line.?Uniquely, it went around the Little League field. At the finish line, I barely held Bill Jackson and Greg Esbitt off. They were about