Meet Mystic Runner Dan Dodson

Posted Friday, March 12, 2010

Dan Dodsons running career began in 1979, but in 1987 he was injured at the Dixville Notch Marathon in New Hampshire running 26.2 on the left side of the road with a bad slant. Within those years he had run about 110 races, including 6 marathons and one ultra (50Km.). While taking a break from running, in the 90's Dan took up cycling and rode in 3 Century Rides (100 miles), which are like a marathon for bicyclists. Soon he got a "burning in his feet" and began walking in early 2000 and eventually entered a few running races as a racewalker and even won some "racewalks" but grew tired of people cheating (running) during races. So Dan eventually integrated a little running while race walking in running races, gradually increasing running time.

After having met friends (and now current club members) Rich and Jackie St. Hilaire at the Jay Jellison 5K in Reading about 6 years ago Dans running career took off!! The three began "doing zillions of races" together, and met others like David Audet & Bill Peters, becoming real running buds constantly emailing each other, studying coolrunning results and now running is a MAJOR part of his life. Dan runs well over 100 races per year (156 in 2009) and is also a new member of the N.E. 65 Plus Running Club.

In his quest for MORE races, by studying coolrunning & N.E. Runner Magazine, Dan found the Lord Wakefield 5K (at the time) in Wakefield on Wednesday evenings run by members of the Mystic Running Club. Dan quickly learned that the club members were good people and he soon started forming new relationships with the Wednesday night crowd, eventually joining the club. He was so impressed by the warmth and supportiveness of the club, he "worked on" bringing his "gang" along. Dan says "Rich & Jackie joined pretty quickly, and Bill Peters, recently. Only David Audet is a holdout -- but we're working on him!!!!!"

Dan D.