Greater Lowell Road Runners (Read 133 times)

PaulyGram lives in Illinois and he joined so that should tell you something.

There are a lot of us Angry Chickens here on RA. I joined at the end of 2012--I followed BadDawg, Scully and Bash in one of those can't beat 'em join 'em type things. Best decision I've ever made in running. There is a lot of info on the website which you've probably already found, and there's a very active facebook group that's public so you can get an idea of what goes on.

There is a Saturday group run in Lowell that I never make it to but it's always there as an option. There are Thursday night track workouts in Chelmsford in the summer and in Lexington in the winter so they have you surrounded if you're in Bedford. And there is always someone racing somewhere. GLRR is such a big club that there are lots of little groups who train together on the side (outside the official GLRR organized runs and workouts) because of location or schedule or whatever.

There's a decent but not too serious emphasis on the New England grand prix road races which are a blast if you're wearing green (next on is Rib Fest 5-miler in Merrimack). We enter teams in the NE Grand Prix cross country series and send a team to club nationals as well. We have active womens and mens masters teams for sure. The 26x1 mile club challenge relay hosted by Somerville Road Runners is coming up in June and we will be actively seeking fast women since each scoring team needs a minimum of 10 women. The Baystate marathon is our biggest fundraiser and it's expected that members volunteer. And running the Mill Cities Relay in December for GLRR is about as much fun as you can have standing up, and I'm not just saying that because I was on the Co-Ed masters team "Bourne to Trott" that won its division last year.

It's one of the largest and most inclusive running clubs in New England but probably the best thing about it is it doesn't take itself too seriously. We train hard and race hard, but at the end of the day this is all just for laughs and beers. So yeah, join.

What Mikey said and it really is the best decision I've ever made in running as well. Really good group of people.

Also, just looked at some of your times, a few of us ran The Great  Stew Chase, sign up ASAP. You would be a great addition to our team and we could use fast women for the 26x1 in a few weeks. Plus, it's a great event to meet everyone since we'll probably have close to 60 people there

Mike and I will sell you on XC once you sign up.

You guys have a lot of good things going on for runners up in the northeast.  Out here in what is relatively a running desert it's pretty lonely.  Local running clubs are OK but in my experience suffer from a dearth of people who really want to run fast and get better.  There is at least one "elite" club in the area that I barely qualify for with my best 3000 and 5k times, but I think they are exclusive in a bit of a snooty kind of way -- I've reached out to a couple of their members on a couple of occasions and they are polite but seem interested in me joining them not at all.  Although I have to say this gives me nice incentive and satisfaction to smoke their jerseys in races whenever I can, which is often enough.  If I had an opportunity in this area like GLRR, as Mike has described it, I'd jump on it.

You guys have a lot of good things going on for runners up in the northeast.  Out here in what is relatively a running desert it's pretty lonely.  Local running clubs are OK but in my experience suffer from a dearth of people who really want to run fast and get better.  There is at least one "elite" club in the area that I barely qualify for with my best 3000 and 5k times, but I think they are exclusive in a bit of a snooty kind of way -- I've reached out to a couple of their members on a couple of occasions and they are polite but seem interested in me joining them not at all.  Although I have to say this gives me nice incentive and satisfaction to smoke their jerseys in races whenever I can, which is often enough.  If I had an opportunity in this area like GLRR, as Mike has described it, I'd jump on it.

Snooty mid-westerners!  You have to go to New England to find open, friendly, humble people.

I suppose GLRR would accept us, but it would be difficult to be active participants.

They like burgers and beer

Swoon

I don't mind shady.  Don't know if green will do anything for me tho....

Seriously all- thanks for all the info.  I will have to check it out - good to know it's a fun group of ppl that might not make this 45 year old  feel too intimidated....always nice to have fast running partners to chase during a workout.