Date/Time: November 21, 2014
Size: ~2000
Weather: Low 30s, snowing, no wind
Course: Flat roads with slight hills, wooded section for last .1 miles
Charity: Turkey Trot Food Drive
Distance: 4.4 miles (actually 4.14 miles)
Time: 37:51 minutes (gun time); 37:01 minutes (chip time) (9:05 min/mile pace)
Rank: Overall: 735/2,317; Age Group: 47/197
This update is up veeeerrry late. I was looking for pictures of me racing, but no luck, so here's the post anyway.
Did you know that Thanksgiving Day is the most popular day to run a race? That definitely seemed true at the Webster Turkey Trot.
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| This was the start line. Yup. 'Nuff said. |
As you can see from the deviation in my gun time and chip time, it took me almost a full minute to even reach the start line, and after that, I spent several more minutes weaving in and out of people before I could reach a comfortable speed. The crowd never did thin out, so I was still dodging racers up until the finish line.
The weird thing about these huge races is that there really isn't a lot of crowd support. The spectators were few and far between, and all the runners seemed preoccupied with themselves. I think its probably because these races attract families or corporate groups, and so there's not a huge sense of supporting your fellow athletes as everyone pushes themselves to their limits. Despite being surrounded by thousands of people, I felt strangely isolated.
Knowing the masses of people that would be there, I treated this race like a training run. And it turned out to be a good one. I didn't become asthmatic breathing in the cold air, and after a mile, I had sufficiently warmed up and felt really good. The course weaved through park roads and out into little suburban neighborhoods. Nothing special, but pleasant.
At mile two, I picked up my pace and started to run on the edge of the road so I could more easily weave around people. At some point, the people running the 2.5 mile race merged into the 4.4 miler, and the crowd became thick and dense again.
After mile three, the course got slightly hilly, which actually became the highlight of the race. You see, the school I go to is practically built on the edge of a mountain, so I have been parking at the bottom and climbing up campus every day for the past three months. After class, I don't have time to drive out to a nice, flat trail for a run so I run up and down the giant hill. Boy, is it brutal, but I was quite thankful for it at this stage of the race. Most of the racers slowed to a crawl going up those rolling hills, and passing all of them gave me a huge feeling of accomplishment.
I was still feeling great at mile four, at which the race directors apparently decided to take the "rugged" route. The race came off the paved trail straight into the woods. There was a small bridge that crossed a stream, but it could only fit two or three people at a time. As you can imagine, I walked the last tenth of a mile.
I'm quite proud of my time, and I'm even more impressed with how good I felt through, and after the race. Normally, working out in the morning leaves me nearly comatose for the rest of the day, but this race had me energized, and when I got home, I finally perfected my homemade apple pie.
I'm not sure if I'll be running another big race any time soon. The Turkey Trot did make me realize that I want to start running more competitive races, and that I'd like to start avoiding these more "family-friendly" runs. But that being said, it was still a festive and fun start to my Thanksgiving.
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