July 30, 2014
Fullerton rolls to Yankee Homecoming win
sports@eagletribune.com
The Eagle Tribune
Wed Jul 30, 2014, 01:22 AM EDT
NEWBURYPORT — Pat Fullerton ran away with the Lions Club Yankee Homecoming 5K crown last evening, winning his second consecutive title with an official time of 15:04.
The Haverhill native, who manages the Newburyport Greater Boston Running Company, beat out his training partner Eric McDonald — who manages the Andover Greater Boston Running Company — by 15 seconds. Lucas Parsons of Methuen was fourth in 15:33.
Fullerton ran 21 seconds faster than last year’s race.
“Last year I went out crazy fast, tweaked my hamstring, so I really had to shut it down the last two miles,” Fullerton said. “This was just a much more conservative race at the start, and I made a move at two miles or a little before two miles and separated and it felt good.”
Though repeating as champion is a nice feeling, Fullerton gave kudos to the former Pentucket star McDonald for keeping it competitive.
“It feels good — we had a really good group this year. I couldn’t mess around like I did last year. I had a good race and it felt really, really good,” he said afterward.
“Me and Eric train together a lot. We worked together for about the first mile and a half, and then I just kind of made a little bit of a move, a big surge, and felt it going up Oakland (street). But I knew if I made separation no one was going to catch me, so I was able to kind of relax it in and get ready for Sunday in the High Street Mile.”
Fullerton, 25, who had a brilliant career at Haverhill High and earned All-American honors at Stonehill, also won the High Street Mile last year, setting the course record at 3:58.8.
On the women’s side, newcomer Beverly Antunes impressively took home her first Yankee Homecoming 5K title with an official time of 18:29.
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