My family gathered at my cousin's house in Columbus for Thanksgiving this year. My cousin lives in Columbus and I live in Cleveland. We are virtual running partners and while we have "run together", we have never physically run together. This seemed like the perfect opportunity for us to finally get together for a run. Once we started looking into potential races, we found this one and also found that there was a family discount for teams of four family members. We invited everyone to participate. Two other cousins decided to join us. (Family runners were: J, JM, M and R) The race turnout was great! There were thousands of participants there trying to make up for the turkey and dressing that they would undoubtedly consume later in the day. There was a 2 and 5 mile event. Both were runner and walker friendly. There was also a free kids run earlier in the day. The event was extremely family friendly and catered to all abilities and fitness levels. Before the race, one of my cousins (JM) disappeared. He ended up running the race alone. The remaining three of us decided to attempt to stay together. For the first two miles, the three of us made pretty good time. We finished mile 1 in 10:07 and mile 2 in 10:43. At mile two, my cousin (M) gave us permission to leave her if she started walking. Shortly thereafter, she took a short walk break. The two of us (J and R) continued on together. We finished mile 3 in 9:55 and mile 4 in 10:40. At about mile 3.5, I attempted to tell J to leave me but he couldn’t hear me. I kept up with him for about another half mile. At mile 4, I made sure he saw and heard me tell him to leave me. He finished mile 5 in about 10:30. I finished mile 5 in about 11:14. Before the race, I imagined I would take an hour to run the 5 miles. I finished in 52:24. I usually get extremely sluggish around mile 3 and my speed drops into the 5MPH range. I believe that running with my cousin pushed me to maintain a more consistent speed. I am very proud of my time. The after race snacks were great. Not great because they were so tasty but great because there was a wide variety of healthy snacks that I had not tried before but had the opportunity to try on this day. They had the usual bananas but they also had OxyWater, cereal bars and what seemed like every available flavor of Zone Perfect Bars. I am usually a Power Bar girl. I am not a huge fan of all of the Power Bar flavors, though. Some of them are too sweet for me. I do like the fact that they fill me up and give me energy. I was excited to try a couple of different flavors of the Zone Perfect Bars on race day. I ate a whole peanut crunch bar. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I thought it was sweet but not necessarily too sweet. I also found it to be filling. I also tasted someone else's Dark Chocolate Caramel Pecan. Yummmmmmmy is an excellent word to describe it. I was not a fan of the OxyWater. I am not a fan of artificial sweeteners. I hate the after taste. I took one sip and passed it on to one of my kiddos. I thoroughly enjoyed this race. I am not sure if I will run this particular race again. I live hours away! I would love to run another Turkey Trot next Thanksgiving not only in preparation for the calories I will consume later in the day but also to celebrate the fact that I am so thankful to God for my ability to walk, jog, run, jump, and leap!
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| M,J and R /Pre-Race |
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| JM, M, R, J /Post-Race |
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