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11/23/2016 07:30 AMPeople who help out at holiday charity events often have a hard time getting to their own celebrations. Allison Dudley Pelliccio, who is the coordinator of the 38th annual Madison Jaycees Turkey Trot race and walk, which will start at 10 a.m. this Thanksgiving on the Madison Green, may have inadvertently messed up her mother’s plans as well.
Because of construction in the Turkey Trot’s usual location, Hammonasset State Park, the race and walk will take place this year on a course located between the Green and the shore, including the entire length of Island Avenue.
“My sister got married in California last month,” Allison says, “but she’s having a reception on this coast for anyone that couldn’t make it out to the wedding. So my mom is coming up from South Carolina and my sister’s in-laws are coming from Oregon, and they all rented an Airbnb together on Island Avenue.
“My mom told me a couple days after the course was finalized, and I said, ‘Well, you know, Mom, you’re gonna be blocked in. I hope you can make it to Thanksgiving after all.’
“It’s only 9:45 to 11,” Allison says, laughing. “They can always walk.”
That’s not the only roadblock caused by the Turkey Trot’s new location.
“It’s been a huge change,” Allison says, “and I think all of us were a little bit daunted at first.
“We were lucky enough that when we started to throw out the idea of the Green,” she says, “the town got on board really quickly. The Madison Police Department—Captain [Joseph] Race in particular—they’ve been wonderful in supporting us and trying to figure out a way to make this safe, make it successful.
“We’re trying to make sure that the neighbors are well aware of the traffic restrictions,” she says, “so we’ve done flyers in mailboxes. We’ve done lawn signs. We’ve been getting permission from all of the different public and private parking lots downtown, which require a lot of paperwork, on that end.”
Allison is optimistic about the change.
“I think it’s going to be great for people who may not be familiar with that part of town,” she says. “The course is gorgeous. I think it’s going to be a great, great day.”
People can still register for the Turkey Trot on the Green on the morning of the event. For information, visit www.madisonjc.com.
Allison has been involved with the Turkey Trot since 2005, when she was working for a sponsor, the soundRUNNER store in Branford.
“I started out mainly doing registrations and some of the logistics,” she says, “and it’s just sort of grown.
“I got to know Dave Parcells, who was the longtime race director and the Jaycees president,” she says. “He passed away in 2007, and it was just a huge loss. He really brought the quality of the events that the Jaycees run up to another level.”
Allison stepped up her participation in the Turkey Trot after Parcells’s death.
“We were able to kind of all come together and put the race on,” she says. “I don’t think any of us understood how much he did until we got together and tried to do it. Really it takes a village to replicate what he did, largely on his own.”
For Allison, the effort is worth it.
“The Jaycees are a great group,” she says. “They want to run a very professional, high-quality event. They want it to be obviously a huge success for the different charities that they fundraise for.”
She says that the Turkey Trot has raised more than $500,000 over the years.
“We sit down after every event,” Alison says, “and we say, ‘What worked? What didn’t work? What can we do better?’
“It’s really a testament to them and their commitment to making the race better that we’ve been able to grow the participation to the levels that it’s at now. You know, we attract over 3,000 people to the Turkey Trot every year.”
Allison’s commitment to this community event may come naturally. Her family’s roots in the area go back almost four centuries.
“I’m a Dudley from Guilford,” she says; her ancestor William Dudley was one of the signers of the compact that established the town in 1639.
Allison attended Guilford public schools, graduating from the high school in 1999. She earned a degree in politics at Fairfield University and worked at several nonprofits, including the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities and Planned Parenthood, before starting at soundRUNNER.
“The nine-to-five-job thing really wasn’t for me,” she says.
She has known her husband, Frank, an electrical engineer for a company in Wallingford, since her college days.
“I met him in a bar in New Haven,” she says with a smile, before specifying that they had mutual friends.
Allison and Frank have two daughters: Indy, 7, and Everly, 4. They live in a house in the Dudleytown section of Guilford. Allison’s father and an uncle, among other relatives, live nearby.
Everly, Allison says, is used to coming along while Allison works on the Turkey Trot and her other volunteer projects: Allison is the coordinator of the Jaycees’ annual triathlon, is on the board of the Branford Community Dining Room (a beneficiary of the Turkey Trot), and is the secretary of the Calvin Leete Elementary School PTO. Still, like most stay-at-home mothers, Allison is looking forward to full-day kindergarten.
Allison’s Turkey Trot duties give her an excuse to lighten her other duties at her family’s Thanksgiving gathering of about 45 Dudley relations.
“We have a big Thanksgiving in the Munger Barn at the Dudley Farm,” Allison says. “We’ve done it for maybe the last 10 years. We used to have it at a rotating group of people’s homes. My dad took down walls to accommodate all the tables in his house, so eventually we just decided that the barn would be the place to do it.
“I don’t help out that much,” she says. “I sort of arrive, eat, and then we leave. My husband picks up a lot of the slack on Thanksgiving, which is a very nice thing for him to do.”
Allison’s holiday uplift largely comes from the Turkey Trot.
“It feels very good to be part of an event that people love to participate in,” she says.
“I really enjoy the mix of people we get. We get very competitive athletes who are right out in front as soon as the gun goes off, and we have parents who are running it with their children for the first time. We’ve got people who this might be the only race that they run every year.
“We have a man who is 90 this year,” she says, “and every year he tells us he’s coming and he hopes that we will extend our age-group awards high enough to accommodate him, which of course we do.”
In summary, Allison says, “the thing that sets this race apart for me is just the feeling of it. We get such a nice mix of people, and everyone hangs out a little bit after the race, and they have chowder. There’s always a pilgrim chasing a turkey. It’s just these kind of oddball things.”
The quirks extend to the music that plays just before the starting gun.
“It’s not like ‘Eye of the Tiger,’ or anything,” Allison says. “It’s ‘Alice’s Restaurant.’
“The work is at times difficult and time-consuming,” she says, “but it’s much outweighed by the feeling of the race. It’s a nice thing after the event to have that feeling of accomplishment and to look around and say, ‘We did it!’
“I’m a stay-at-home mom,” she says, “so accomplishment is rare in my day to day, you know?”
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