Save A Turkey Trot

The Dykstra family flew home for Thanksgiving. Being the race junky that I am I decided to see if there were any races in town during Thanksgiving. I was raised in a progressive area in Northern Caliifornia so the usual Turkey Trot 5k was replaced by the inaggural "Save a Turkey Trot 5k". It is an event designed to raise awarness about vegan diets and athletics. Even through I am not a vegan/vegetarian myself I really wanted to run a race with my mom so we both signed up.

My mother is the original exercise junky of our family. She was the only one who ran for years and no one understood why on earth she did it. Over the last few years demanding work and life commitments have prevented her from exercising regularly. She has been running intermittent short distances in the mornings at the local high school track for the past few months, so a 5k race event is a fairly long distance for her. Her goal was to perform better than she did in the last 10k we ran together about six months ago (10k@1:32:??). I was hoping to set a new PR (5k@21:56) and possibly rank somewhat high in my division. I thought that with a limited number of participants and some recent speedwork I might have a shot.

I started the race at a fairly aggressive pace for myself. By mile one I had worked to pass two people that seemed to be matched with my running level at a pace of 6:34. Amazingly enough one of the two runners I passed was pushing a baby stroller. This was much more impressive later in the race when he sprinted past me. Nearing the end of the race I got painfull cramps. It was terrible, I had to walk the last 400 meters and watch the people I had worked so hard to pass fly by me during their finish, I wasn't fatigued, I wasn't sucking down air I just couldn't run due to cramps. I am disapointed and it cost me, my finishing time was 23:08. I don't know if I was set for a PR pace prior to the slow down but it was close.

The good news is that my mom finished with a 37:23 increasing her pace from 14:50 to 11:53 it's a huge improvement and I am proud of her. GO MOM!