Turkey Trot Race Report

Again I'm conflicted, should you really have a race report about a turkey trot? I'm going to I guess, for my own record keeping. First I must say stay away from Taco John's for any late night snacking; gave my son and me a gurgly stomach all week. Your experiences may vary.

We flew to the Black Hills of South Dakota to spend the holiday with my family. Had beautiful weather there all week, upper 50's to 60's. Very nice. Race morning was chilly but beautiful nonetheless. As we waited around at the end I was in shorts, no hat or gloves and not even the slightest bit chilled, even after 45 minutes. The event was very casual. Verrrrrry casual. There was a clock but no official timing. Didn't really seem to be an official finish line either as there was a sign with a turkey on it (like the starting line), the clock at the finish and a third spot with FINISH written on the walkway. By all accounts the course was .08-.1 miles long too.

Still, I enjoyed the race as it was the first 5k I've done in quite some time. I never really respected the distance before until I moved to Tokyo. There my running club did a 5k time trial every month. I definitely grew to respect and enjoy the distance. Well, three paragraphs in and I haven't really started the race report. Here goes:

The course was mostly flat and I started out a little quick. At one point Mr. Garmin read 6:16 per mile so I slowed a little from that. I was passed by a very tall guy in yellow, like 6'5" or so. I was surprised because shorter is usually better. Kept running and settled in behind a younger person, maybe a high school cross country runner, with a funny way of kicking his heels out when he ran. The one mile point (no mile markers, just Mr. Garmin) was at a turn around, 6:34. I counted maybe 20 people in front of me. Most looked like young runners in high school or college but I didn't really pay attention. On the way back we ran into the bulk of everybody else which made the sidewalk very crowded. Heavy breather came up behind me but had a hard time passing because of the oncoming people. Eventually she did though and I was surprised to see it was a young woman. Didn't fit with the heavy breathing.

Mile two came and went at 6:34 again, quite consistent anyway. I knew my pace was 7 seconds off of 20 minute pace but I didn't want to push harder and then really blow up. In mile 3 I was passed by a couple young guys running easy and chatting. At first I was impressed that the pace was so easy for them but then I was less impressed with their effort. I mean really, run hard why don't you? But then it hit me that this was a turkey trot after all so I cut them some slack (all this occurred in my mind though). My pace for the last mile slowed to 6:49 but part of that was climbing a 12-15 foot bank by a stream and then running about half a mile on the grass. Took me back to my own high school cross country days. I felt I was keeping a decent pace and passed heavy breather. I finished strong but was confused at the finish line fiasco. Oh well, it was just a turkey trot. Official time by Mr. Garmin was 21:08 but I'm reducing that to 20:36 for an actual 5k distance. With passing some people and getting passed I figured I was in the 20-25 range of finishers.

After a minute or two of rest I headed back out on the course in reverse to find my wife. We met up about a half mile from the finish and I paced her in to a PB of just over 35 minutes. She never thinks she can do those things by I always know she can. Funny how you can have so much more confidence for other people's running. Now she's all intimidated about the 10k I'm pushing her towards.

Other good news is that I won a cherry pie that they held a drawing to give away. They had 350 pies for 800-900 runners. After that, like many of you I'm sure, was much food and a nap. Nice.

Today was a nice sunny morning but cooler, maybe 30 degrees. Got in a good distance and paced run with a group. Oh, thanks for all the well wishes about the knee. A little bit of lingering pain but it is getting to be less and less every day. Not holding me back at all.

All in: Thursday 5.3 at 7:45
Saturday 11.21 at 8:14.