LYNN — Call the “Shoe City Series” a success, as the four-race series ended this week with the Turkey Trot/Stop the Violence 5K in Lynn. The previous three races in the series were the Hibernian Recovery Run in March, Fire and Police Family Day 5K in May, and Clock to Rock 5K in September.
Call it the main course, as this week’s race came with a record-breaking entry field of 221 runners and its largest number of finishers with 185. Those who registered for all four races received medals.
The Turkey Trot 5K was won by Eamonn McHale of Lynn with a time of 18:04 (5:49 pace). The first woman to finish was Jackie Ramirez of Lynn with a time of 21:11 (6:49 pace).
As expected, the race was full of Lynn runners, but the city still represented itself remarkably well. The first 13 finishers were from Lynn, and 20 of the top 21.
Top-10 finishers were McHale, Liban Abdikar (18:27), Brandon Sok (18:32), Gianni Elmudesi (18:37), Franklin Rodriguez (18:51), Edgar Ortega (18:58), Joel Pimentel (19:17), Nicholas Fusco (19:26), Santiago Aguiar (19:34), and Xavier Paule (19:40).
All 10 runners finished with a pace of 6:20 or better. McHale, Abdikar (5:57), Sok (5:58), and Elmudesi (6:00) registered paces of 6:00 or less.
The oldest runners in the Trot were 73-year-olds Dottie Thibodeau (51:27) and Debra Papadinoff (54:03) from Lynn. The youngest runner was 5-year old Dalton Campbell (33:35) from Lynn.
The race featured runners from Lynn, Haverhill, Danvers, Saugus, Charlestown, Lynnfield, Georgetown, Beverly, Wenham, Peabody, Wakefield, Derry (NH), North Reading, Groveland, Wilmington, Marblehead, Reading, Nahant, Amesbury, Medford, Lowell, and Methuen.
