Race Recap: Turkey Trot 5K Wingding

I know I said I wasn’t going to blog until Tuesday, but I lied. In the month of December, I’m participating in reverb10, where I’ll be using prompts to reflect on the year I’ve had and prepare for the one coming up. I’m really excited about it so check it out!

Anyway, I’ve decided to blog today (and tomorrow, and I’ll be posting another letter to that elusive future husband of mine on Monday) so I have time to write everything I need to write before December rolls around.

Onto today’s post! Today, I ran my fifth Turkey Trot and when I say “ran,” I do mean RAN!

My alarm went off at 5am, which is such a godawful hour for your first day of vacation, but get up I did. I tried eating a granola bar beforehand but I was just too nervous. Luckily, my race was at 7am so I knew I would be OK. I managed to drink a little water, though. That’s something!

My mom and I made our way over to the race start around 6:30am. I realized while making our way over that a) I was starving and b) I had to pee. Luckily, there were Porta-Potties by the race start! Score! And the lines weren’t too bad! Double score!

The race began a little after 7am and we were pretty far back from where the race actually began so I kept my eye on the clock as I passed it to know when I actually started the 3.1 miles.

Here’s my mileage breakdown, thanks to my mom’s fancy Garmin:

Mile 1 – 12:11
Mile 2 – 14:20 <—3 minute walking break
Mile 3 – 14:26 <—3 minute walking break
Mile .1 – 2:38

The first mile was by far the toughest. It’s always hard for me to find my groove in the beginning, but I was determined to make it to the first mile marker. I have to say, I loved how crowded it was. Call me weird, but it’s just fun to race with all these people and my last race wasn’t crowded at all and I was walking by myself for 90% of it. The pushing and shoving is a little annoying, but it was tame this year thankfully. Still, check out that pace for my first mile! I am a rockstar.

I took two 3-minute walking breaks that felt more like 30 seconds. But they were much needed and helped me catch my breath. The only thing that sucks about walking breaks is finding your groove again when you start running.

But I ran most of this race, finishing with a new PR at 43:35. I am extremely proud of that time, even though it may seem like a super slow pace for some runners. I hope to become faster in time but right now, I’m just focusing on running my best race and doing just a little bit better each time.

After running the 5K with me, my mom went and ran the 10K, finishing in 1:18, which meant she ran for two hours today. (She’s also run 26 miles since Sunday – simply crazy!)

It was one of my best runs to date and I’m signed up for two 5K’s in December, one on the 5th and one on the 8th. I think I’ve caught the running bug.