Event

Turkey Trot – 2010

 November 13, 2010

It was a beautiful day about three weeks ago when I sent out an innocent e-mail – "Does anybody want to run the Longmont Turkey Trot with me – Nov. 13 – 2 miles." Last year when I sent this e-mail, no one did, and so I was able to just "blow it off". This year, everybody did, so . . .

On Saturday morning, we all piled into a couple of cars and went to run the race. The participants were – Mat's family (Mat, Andi, Andrew and Mylie – Wyatt stayed home with Nana), Erica's family – Erica and Rich – Alice and Evy stayed home with Nana), Brea's family – Ben (Brea had to work – but she did come over later in the day), and Me (Mar stayed home with the wee ones). Mat's family and Erica's family came Friday night. Ben came over Saturday morning. I got home from Phoenix Friday night. So we were all ready.

The number one obstacle – it was supposed to be cold. After all, it is mid-November in Colorado. We all bundled up pretty well. By race time, 9:15, it had warmed up to about 40 degrees, so we started peeling off gloves and hats pretty soon after we began.

I feel fortunate in these kind of races. Fortunate that Mat always runs with Andrew and Andi always runs with Mylie. I figure both Mat and Andi could beat me. But because of their partnerships, well I have them behind me. Erica and Rich both say they are not there to "run fast", but just to run. Okay, I have them beat. Now Ben is a different matter. I set two goals. One was to run two miles in less that 18 minutes. The other was to beat Ben.

Goal one – I ran it in 17:51. I call that respectable. Goal two – Ben let me cross in front of him. He ran with e the whole time, but I feel certain that he could have left me in a cloud of dust at the end. My problem is that when I run in a crowd, I have a hard time pacing myself, so I go too fast at the beginning, and then it is a challenge at the end. Anyway, Ben let me cross first.

We had a good time. We spent 1 ½ hour doing a good thing as a family. It was warm enough to not need hot chocolate at the end.

And I am sure that if Michael's family and Andrea's family had been here, they would have run also. If not, they wouldn't have gotten any pizza (of course I would have had a hard time beating some of the Dawson's.)

Official Results:

I had an official time of 17:51 – which is what I expected.

I came in 4^th in my category – out of 9 – and the best was 11:02 (I hate that person).

I came in 140^th in the race – out of 650. Because of Ben's magnanimous nature, he was 141 st.

Results can be viewed at: http://results.active.com/pages/page.jsp?eventID=1897523