Bob Fitzgerald
Editor/Co-Publisher

More commonly referred to as “Fitz”, Bob has interviewed many of the sports luminaries and has covered major running events in Ireland, Scotland, Germany, Finland, Mexico, Canada, the Bahamas and across the United States. His writing and photos have appeared in the Boston Globe, Running Times and Runner’s World with cover shots for American Track & Field and numerous other running publications across the U.S.
A former newspaper sports columnist, Fitz was a defensive tackle in high school and began running after college to lose “beer weight.” He caught the bug, shed the pounds and logged bests of 14:33 for 3M and 2:40:42 for the marathon (Boston of course!). Growing up in Auburndale by the 17-mile mark of the Boston Marathon, Fitz spent every childhood Patriots’ Day watching the spectacle with his parents and always waiting for Johnny “The Elder” Kelley to pass. He’s since covered the event from the Hopkinton Green, Heartbreak Hill and now the Copley Media Room before moving to the Photo Bridge.

Michelle LeBrun
Co-Publisher, Advertising, Circulation

When a like minded group of regional running magazines across the US joined together to create the Endurance Sports Media Group in 2008, Michelle was the lynchpin and de facto president, presiding over meetings and keeping the group’s many moving parts ‘on point.’ A former cognitive therapist and teacher, Michelle oversees most of what keeps this magazine running, including but not limited to advertising, circulation, the calendar and web, not to mention counseling numerous race directors. Michelle is also an accomplished shutterbug and her photos have graced many an issue of NER. If Fitz is the ‘Face of NER’ then Michelle is certainly the ‘Voice of NER.” Both are Will Cloney award winners for contributions to the regional running scene. The only female to complete every race in the first three seasons of the Pub Series, Michelle keeps the staff grounded with a middle of the pack perspective.

Tom Derderian
My Word

Through his years of immersion in the running world, Tom has developed a many-hued take on all aspects of our sport, and thus his ever-engaging opinion piece: My Word. Tom first ran the Boston Marathon while in high school before later running track and cross-country at UMass/Amherst, graduating with a degree in journalism and English literature. He competed in both the 1972 and 1976 US Olympic Marathon Trials. His fastest Boston was 2:19:04 for 18th place in 1975.
Tom coached high school in Amherst and college at Salem State, and now is head coach of the Greater Boston Track Club. Tom wrote in the very first issue of this magazine in 1983. His book, “Boston Marathon,” is now in its third edition. He is co-founder of the Sugarloaf Mt. AC in Amherst (1971) and of SMAC’s yearly 10-mile race, first held in 1975. He is also a certified arborist and serves on his town’s tree committee.
Tom and his wife, Cynthia Hastings, a long-time, active member of GBTC, live on the shore in Winthrop, MA, slightly east of Boston. They have two daughters, Jane and Hattie.

Nancy Clark (MS, RD, CSSD)
Nutrition

Nancy’s inclusion in the very first issue of BRN could be called nepotism as she’s married to the magazine’s founder, John McGrath, but that would be selling this nutritional guru short. A much sought after national speaker, Nancy is the team nutritionist for the Boston Red Sox and her clients have included members of the Boston Celtics and Boston Bruins. She has counseled both Olympians and weekend warriors and is the author of “Nancy Clark’s Sports Nutrition Guidebook” with over 600,000 copies sold, “Food Guide for Marathoners: Tips for Everyday Champions”, “Food Guide for New Runners: Getting It Right From the Start”, and Cyclist’s Food Guide: Fueling for the Distance.”
Nancy is a long-time member of the Greater Boston TC and has competed at distances up to and including the marathon. She’s also an avid biker and has led many extended bike tours through the Canadian and Colorado Rockies. She’s also trekked into the Himalayas while planning the high altitude menu for the expedition.
Nancy has a private practice in Newton Highlands, MA. She and husband John live in Waltham, MA and have a daughter, Mary, and son, John Michael.

Dave McGillivray
From the Director’s Chair

Who better to write about what’s trending with races and participants than the race director of the B.A.A. Boston Marathon, Falmouth Road Race, Beach to Beacon 10K, and many other events near and far. Since founding Dave McGillivray Sports Enterprises (DMSE) in 1981, Dave has helped organize over 900 endurance events. Three years prior to the formation of DMSE, Dave ran across the US to benefit the Jimmy Fund and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. His philanthropy has kept stride through the years. Much of Dave’s recent racing and fundraising has focused on MR8, created in memory of Martin Richards, the 8 year-old boy killed in the 2013 marathon bombings. This Patriots’ Day will mark Dave’s 45th Boston Marathon, and 30th evening run from Hopkinton to Boston after his race duties are over. Dave lives in N. Andover with wife Katie, daughter Elle, and son Luke.

Pete Rea
Training Talk

A native of Connecticut, Pete is the Elite Athlete Coach and Coordinator at the ZAP Fitness Team USA Training Center in Blowing Rock, NC. Pete ran for the University of Connecticut, graduating in 1992 (Journalism/American Literature) as an All Big East Conference XC Selection. While achieving his masters degree, he ran for Team Nike South.
Since 2002, Pete has guided more than three dozen athletes to Olympic Trials berths in distances from the 1500m to the marathon. In addition, five ZAP men and one ZAP woman have qualified for the Senior World Cross Country Team, two have qualified for the IAAF World Track & Field Championships and one (Tyler Pennel) was the winner of the 2014 USATF Marathon Championship and member of the World Half Marathon Team. The ZAP fitness men have also won the 2006, 2007, 2009, and 2014 USATF National Club XC Championships.
Pete’s hobbies include reading military history, folk music, and following everything that is UConn basketball. He and his wife (ZAP Founder) Zika have a daughter Elyse, and son Sean.

Lonny Townley
Club Notes

After graduating with a masters in Broadcast Administration from BU, Lonny started writing in 1986 about what was trending with our region’s copious running clubs and hasn’t missed an installment since. He qualified for his first Boston Marathon in 1979 and in the next six years would run 29 marathons with a personal best of 2:41:40. He’d run Boston five times with a best of 2:43 in 1983. He joined the Greater Framingham Track Club in 1982, and quickly became the newsletter editor for the next decade while eventually serving as club Treasurer, VP and President. Lonny also directed dozens of road races. Starting in 1986, he’s coordinated a team of volunteers (74 in 2017) to watch over the digital clocks and mile markers along the Boston Marathon course, a few near his home in Ashland.
Back woes have hampered Lonny’s running, but he’ll put peddle to the metal (actually asphalt) and bike around 2,500 miles from early spring through the fall. This June he’ll be in the saddle for his 18th consecutive Trek Across Maine fundraiser.

John Barbour

The sport grabbed northern California native Barbour at seven and hasn’t let go for more than 50 years. John would bug his track-fan dad to let him run a mile occasionally; at various meets he witnessed several world records as a youth and was in Munich’s Olympic Stadium in ’72 for Steve Prefontaine’s 5000m final and Frank Shorter’s marathon victory.
A runner in high school and then at D3 Whitman College, John entered Emory U. as a grad student and ran 10K and marathon PRs of 29:33 and 2:19:26 while also coaching the women distance runners. Moving to Gloucester in 1993 he joined the Greater Lowell Road Runners and at age 40 ran a Boston-debut 2:20:26 to become a two-time Olympic Trials qualifier.
Barbour coached for GLRR (1999-2006) and Gloucester HS (1998-2002), where the distance medley relay team ran a still standing US prep indoor record 9:59.94. He got indoor track off the ground at Manchester-Essex HS in ’08 before moving to Boston suburb West Roxbury in 2013. He currently coaches for the Liberty AC, at Dedham’s Ursuline Academy, and is one of the nation’s top age-group runners.

Jean Cann

Jean lives in Hopkinton, MA, with husband Brian and their three children—Ian and his younger sister, Charlotte, and younger brother, Noah.
Competing for Brandeis University, Jean was a six-time All American in cross country and track (5,000m and 10,000m) with PRs of 16:47 and 35:27. After college she ran for Nike Boston, placing 3rd at the USATF-NE Half Marathon Championship while also helping Nike Boston win the USATF-NE XC Championship.
Jean attended graduate school for writing at BU and worked at The Sports Museum of New England and The Red Auerbach Youth Foundation while also penning articles for NER. In just two years as Brandeis head coach for men and women’s track and cross country at Brandeis, Jean’s teams qualified for the NCAA D3 XC Championships with numerous individual national qualifiers and 13 All America performances, plus school records in the women’s DMR and 5,000m.
Jean currently writes for the Hopkinton Independent and has been coaching the Hopkinton Middle School cross country team for three years. She also started and co-directs a five-week summer track & field program in Hopkinton for about 200 kids annually, now in its seventh year.

Nate Getman

Our roving pundit in the Empire State, Nate Getman is an attorney in central New York State, where he has resided and run most of his life. His running took him to Syracuse University where he joined the cross-country and track teams and eventually became team captain. Out of college, he donned the Syracuse Chargers Track Club singlet for a few seasons and hit road personal bests of 1:10 in the half marathon and 49:43 for 15k. With his competitive running over, he is now chasing his 7-year-old son, Sam. He loves writing for New England Runner and his assignments have given him a chance to talk to greats like Aisling Cuffe, Bill Aris and Mark Wetmore, as well as potential future greats such as Sage Hurta. He can be seen annually on WKTV’s coverage of the Utica Boilermaker Road Race as an analyst. He also enjoys training other runners and never tires of watching people achieve their goals.

Scott Mason

Living in Warwick, RI, Scott started in race photography with Frontrunner Magazine in 1979. He was also quite competitive on the roads, running 14:23 for 5K, 23:58 for 5 miles, and 49:50 for 10 miles. One of Scott’s email addresses begins “injuryprone@… which accounts for several long absences from competition. He did emerge briefly as a national caliber master runner, but once that dried up, he took his photography to the next level. In the last decade he’s shot over 400 New England races covering all terrain: roads, cross country, mountain, trail, and snowshoe racing. He’s been published in Running Times, Runners World, Trail Runner, Ultrarunner and is the only person to have appeared on NER’s cover while also having shot a cover for NER. Scott received the Marja Bakker Award from USATF-NE in 2013 for contributions to the local running scene.

Donni Richman

NER’s graphic designer graduated Bucknell with a BA in Liberal Arts with a Fine Arts emphasis and arrived at BRN in its fourth year. As Donni puts it, “That was at the very beginning of the great transformation from drawing board cut (with exacto knife) & paste (with adhesive, hot wax) to desktop computer publishing. The computers were Mac Plusses, which had the little 9” screens and 1 meg of RAM! That’s a far cry from today’s all electronic, all digital output.”
Proprietor of DR Design Graphics, Donni was also on board for the advent of Patriots Football Weekly and has worked for Cahners/Reed Publishing and various other corporations while also helping out local running organizations such as the B.A.A. and USATF-NE. He and wife Fran live in Waltham, MA and have a son, Sam.

Victah Sailer

Victah is our go-to guy for stirring images taken at US and World Championships, the Olympics, the World Marathon Majors, you name it. His first name is actually Victor, but his nephew couldn’t pronounce it, and given that Victor lives on Long Island—that’s Lawn Guyland, Noo Yahk—Victah has stuck.
Victah was a runner at Archbishop Molly HS (NY) and a decathlete at East Stroudsburg State College. He juggled careers as a fireman and photographer before quitting the NYFD after 20 years. Victah first began shooting in 1978. After heading up two previous companies, he established Photo Run in 1992 and is employed by events across the US and abroad. Victah and wife Tabitha live in Smithfield, NY.