My First 5K for December is

Cambridge Winter Classic 5K on Sunday December 7th.

This will be the second year in a row that I’ve run this race. Last year a group from my office and several friends from the Melrose Running Club ran the race.

It was a freezing cold day. The great thing about running is that you warm up pretty quickly. After the race we bundled up and drank ice-cold beer.

The beverage sponsor of the race was Jack’s Abby Brewing so there was no shortage of beer. The beer was so cold that it was difficult to really taste it. What I could taste was really good though. Jack is back for 2014!

The Grand Tour of Cambridge

The race starts on Sidney Street and takes a quick left hand turn onto Mass Ave at Lafayette Square. We run about a mile down Mass Ave and take another left onto Linden Street. Linden takes us out to Mt. Auburn Street. After about a quarter-mile we turn right onto Putnam Ave.

Putnam Ave roughly parallels Memorial Drive. It’s back about two to five blocks from Memorial Drive and takes us through this Cambridge residential district.

The last three-quarters of a mile is on Brookline Street. We take a right off of Brookline onto Franklin for the last run in for the finish.

The main thoroughfares of Cambridge are mostly commercial store fronts with restaurants and shops of all kinds. Cambridge in known for being the home of both Harvard and MIT. Many international biotech and hi-tech companies are based here or have major facilities or offices here.

One of the great things about this race is that we get to see some of the residential neighborhoods of Cambridge. We get to see the folks who grew up here on their stairs, and porches cheering us on. These are the people of families that built Cambridge and don’t have PhDs from down the road or fat salaries from the high-tech start-ups moving into their neighborhoods.

While the heart of Cambridge may be along Mass Ave and Memorial Drive with the universities, hi-tech and nano-technology companies, the soul of Cambridge is the people who live in these neighborhoods that many of us never see.

I’ll have a race re-cap, hopefully some photos and a link to results on Monday.

Run well my friends!

Andy