Turkey Trot

Four friends and I ran the Turkey Trot in Apex this past Saturday. I think everyone knows that I'm not exactly knows for my bright-eyedness and bushy-tailness before, oh, 10:00 or so on weekend mornings so the fact that I had to get up and be gone by 8:30 on a Saturday was definitely a challenge. But see, I don't look too miserable:

















We met at Sara's so we could all pile into Vickie's car (Thanks for driving, Vickie!) and go to the park together. Sara's hubby, Cliff, was nice enough to take a picture of us as we headed out.













{No, we didn't plan the tall to short thing.}

The event had t-shirts from past races that they were giving away. We were looking at them and figured they'd all be extra-larges or extra-smalls but guess what? We actually found mediums! So we all walked away with a free t-shirt, which meant we actually got TWO for running this race. Totally worth getting up at 8:00 on a Saturday for.

The race started just after 10:00 and it had warmed up some by then - it was probably low 50's, but there was a breeze. I wore layers - tank top, short-sleeved shirt, and my fleece vest - and kept them all on. Sara's an old hat at these races and took her vest off beforehand. I should've taken mine off, too, because I warmed up pretty quickly.

The race course took us around a lake, which made for nice scenery. I was really glad we were allowed to have music; who wants to hear only their labored breathing?

I reached the one-mile mark in nine minutes, which is a pretty good pace for me. At the 15-minute mark, I felt like walking (I think I started out a little too fast), but I told myself to make it to two miles and reevaluate. At the two-mile mark, I didn't feel worse so I pushed on. Sara had told us about a hill at the very end so when I reached the path UPHILL from the lake to the parking lot, I thought, "This is it!" But it wasn't. I got to the top of that hill and found out I still had to go through the parking lot, down an incline, back UP that incline, then through the parking lot to the finish line. Geez, was this thing ever gonna end?

I wanted to finish in around 28 minutes. My official time was 28:31. Out of the 265 racers with timing chips, I was 147th. In my age group (30 - 34), I was 6th out of 19. The person who finished in the fastest time, a 34-year-old man, ran it in 17:22. That's an average of 5:36 per mile.

Showoff.

Just for comparison's sake: The fastest girl - and she was just a girl at only 16 years old - finished in 20:52.

I'm running a Reindeer Romp, another 5k, in a couple weeks. Fingers crossed for good weather and free t-shirts.