Turkey Trot & Training Snapshot

I’m glad I didn’t promise to blog more frequently in my last blog post, since that was over 3 weeks ago at this point. Despite my best intentions to blog more than once a month, it just may not be happening, at least until I am training for a new race. I’m still having commitment issues in picking a race which is nothing new. After bailing on a few races that I registered and paid for, I am hesitant in signing up for races until shortly before them. Of course this usually means either paying the highest registration fee or the race getting sold out.

 

Rewinding a bit: Along with 1,750 other people, in my race alone, I got up early on Thanksgiving morning to join in a Turkey Trot. As is typical for me, I waited and debated over whether to sign up and by the time I decided the $40 to run 3.1 miles was worth it, the race was full. A guy in my local running group wasn’t able to run and offered me his number so I was able to run it after all. Since I wanted more mileage for the day I decided to run a circuitous route to and from the race – adding an additional 2.5 miles on each end.

Turkey Trots always draw an interesting crowd. Big groups who are out there for a fun and healthy way to start the day, and some super serious racers gunning for PRs. I was somewhere in the middle. I wasn’t looking for a PR, but I did want to use it to see where I am at this point. I lined up about a 1/4 way back and within a few seconds we were across the starting line. Within 30 feet of the start line a woman was weaving and bobbing around the runners while yelling “if you were going to go this slow you should line up at the back!” Yikes.

I was pretty confident that I could run the 5k at about 8:15 pace so that’s what I started at. Fear of crashing and burning early always has me start off at a conservative/comfortable pace, even during short distances. When I hit the one mile marker I felt good and decided I could speed up a little without feeling like my lungs would be burning the rest of the way. At the two mile marker I did the same. About a 1/3 of a mile before the finish is a short, but semi-steep uphill. I passed a 10 year old kid and felt a little bad passing him. Not to worry, on the descent on the other side he went flying past me, leaving me in his dust 🙂 I crossed the finish line in 24:58 (8:02/mi pace). 

Mile splits from turkey trot

 

I was really happy with this time and even happier to have run each mile faster than the previous. The best part of the race is the food at the end! Dunkin’ Donuts has coffee, hot chocolate, and munchkins set up, UNREAL candy had peanut butter cup and chocolate covered candy samples, bottles of water of plentiful, and I think I spied bananas as well. With my miles to and from the race included, I rounded out the day at just over 8 miles.

Warm up, cool down, & Race

As for day to day running . . . well, it’s not quite where I hoped it would be. After the Turkey Trot, I immediately told my husband I really wanted to run each day since he would be off from work for the long weekend, and then didn’t run again until Tuesday of the following week. The runs I have been doing though are focused on speed work or recovery and I’m happy about that. I even hit my longest run since the Chicago Marathon and my fastest double-digit run of 2015, finishing 11 miles at 8:47 pace with my last mile being the fastest at 8:18.

P.S. Anyone know how I can change the size of screen shot pictures? The above is a screen shot of my training worksheet, but it’s so small. It’s the only picture that doesn’t have an option to change the size.