Turkey Trotting

Happy Friday, friends. If you follow me on Instagram, I’m sure you saw my flurry of activity in the last few days. I am all or nothing with that thing -- yikes. Anyway, we ended up getting nearly a foot of snow on Wednesday, so my plans to run the Turkey Trot 5-miler seemed dashed when I woke up to this in my backyard.

Gorgeous, but slick!

The last race I ran was back in early August. Since then (and a while before), we’ve been TTC and I haven’t been running seriously or fast or long or anything. Actually, I’m quite frustrated with running at the moment because I can’t figure out if I can just keep training like normal or if I’ll need to lay low until pregnancy happens. It all seems to be different depending on the person, and so far it doesn’t seem like running is helping or hindering either way. In other words, I’m in exercise purgatory.

Back to the race. I had to shovel myself out of the garage and drive on some slippery highways to get to the park to register. I wasn’t terribly nervous because the last time I ran fast was so long ago -- I knew it wouldn’t exactly be a fast day, especially combined with the weather.

The plan? Have fun and take in the Rave Run scenery!


To my surprise, a lot of trotters showed up. I got there early for registration and then had to wait in the cold for quite some time before the gun went off. I ran a warmup mile just to stay warm. Then I settled myself in the middle of the pack to start.

I’ve been running lately with the Nike app because it’s fun to hear cheers as you plod along, and this race was no exception. I got 8 different cheers along the way. I was also surprised to hear that I was averaging 7:35/ mile the entire way despite a clogged first quarter mile where I basically had to walk to get through all the people and the slush. Yeah, the slush and freezing puddles. My feet were soaked and freezing by the end, but I didn’t fall once!

My lack of training/stamina caught up with me a bit in the final mile, but I crossed the finish in 38:28 -- 7:40/mile. It’s actually a PR by a few seconds since my last 5-mile race back in 2006.


So, I’ll take it, and I’m extremely pleased with anything below 8:30, which is the fastest pace I’ve been running most days in the last several months. My body is totally unhappy with me today, though. Ouch. Still, I love racing on holidays! When I got home, Ada and Stephen had built a snowman and then we watched the Macy’s parade. And ate and ate and ate. But that’s a story for another day.

Did anyone else run a Thanksgiving race? Hope you’re enjoying your holiday!

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