Mill Cities Relay

The Mill Cities Relay is quite possibly the most fun you’ll ever have wearing running shoes. It is open to anyone and everyone in the Wicked Running Club: ALL types of runners and ALL speeds. The race begins in Nashua, NH, and meanders its way along the Merrimack River, traveling a total distance of 27(ish) miles ending up at The Claddagh Pub in Lawrence, MA. Along the way, you and your 4 teammates will run varying length legs of 5.65, 4.75, 2.5, 9.8, and 3.9 miles along a beautiful course. You can see a detailed course and leg descriptions here.

As much fun as it is running with your Wicked teammates, the most fun is “leapfrogging” around the course and getting everyone to their transition areas on time. Members of the club have put together detailed leapfrog instructions based on years of experience running the relay that we highly recommend leveraging and adhering to. You can see the instructions here.

This is an invitational race, and Wicked is appreciative to be included in The Mill Cities Alliance. As such, there are some rules and requirements we need to abide by.

First of which, is that we need to enter teams that fit the relay age and gender criteria. We realize members often like to run with friends for relays and races. However, you may not be the same age, gender, etc. as your friends. For instance, it’s unlikely a 30-year-old female can be on a team with a 40-year-old male and a 50-year-old female as that that group would not fit in any category.

In addition, unlike some other relays, clubs can only score in each category once. Therefore, there’s no reason to enter multiple teams into the same category and we try to enter teams into as many categories as possible to generate as many points possible towards the team score award. Therefore, the club will be assigning all runners into appropriate categories. We ask all members to be understanding and accepting of whatever their team assignment happens to be.

Please Note: In the past, there has been a bit of an issue with runners being out on the course for many hours after most of the teams have already finished. While we want runners of all abilities, we will have to follow the rules of the Sunshine Start when putting the teams together. Following is the description of that recent rule change: Sunshine Start for slower runners and runners of a certain age: Clubs should get an estimated time for their teams and place them in the Sunshine Start if teams will average over 11 minutes per mile. Sunshine start runners are non-scoring, and are 3 person teams that run 17 miles, legs 3, 4, and 5. The Sunshine Start is Leg 3 at the Vocational school at 8:45am.

More information about the Mill Cities Relay is available on the relay’s website and Facebook page.