Thanksgiving weekend: full of food, family and racing
Posted on December 2nd, 2008 by jeremy in Family, Races, Running
Tiff and I joke about how our Thanksgivings have pretty much the same pattern every year. We call it the “Tour of rt.75″. It usually starts with us going to Grandma Z’s in Tipp City, OH on wednesday night. We wake up in the morning and go south to Miamisburg for the Turkey Trot 5mi race on Thanksgiving morning. From there we go to My Aunt and Uncle’s in Tipp City for the First meal of the day. Then its north on 75 to Troy (one exit up) for the second meal, and from there continuing north and then a bit west to somewhere around Celina/ New Knoxville area. We usually end up either back in Bowling Green or stay over with Grandma Brown till friday. See the Map to get a general idea of the path…
It may seem like a lot, and it is, and usually we are completely stuffed and wore out by the end of the day, but in the end we are happy to able to see that much family in one day. I know a lot of people who have to alternate which side of the family they go to for each holiday, so we feel incredibly blessed.
Now to the racing…Thursday morning…Thanksgiving day…5 miles…
There was a pretty large group of family this year for the race…Tiff and I, my dad, my uncle, two cousins and tiff’s brother all went. I’ll go ahead and answer an obvious question…yes tiff beat me in this one (5mos pregnant). Our times respectively were…Tiff: 36:42 and Me: 36:49. This is a fairly competitive race so none of us won any age group awards or anything…
On to the next race…our first year competing in the Holiday Hustle 5K in Maumee, OH. This race takes place at 5:00 in the evening on the saturday after Thanksgiving…We had my family meal at noon that day (the steaks were great, mom), so I wasn’t really planning to race this one too hard…Our friend/training partner, Mark and his wife went with us to the race as well. When the race started I stayed back a bit from the start to allow people to get moving (1000+ runners), and when I started it felt like a quick, but not real fast pace…just comfortable enough. Wearing the Garmin I decided not to look at all and just wait for the mile indicator noise (which was pretty close to accurate…thanks race organizers). After about a mile I caught up to Mark, which surprised me a bit because he normally runs faster than I do. I ran with him for a while and fell back a bit, but still within 10 feet or so. All this time I was feeling really good, not straining too much to hold my pace, so I thought I was around a 7:10-7:20 pace. I still didn’t look at the Garmin for any confirmation and my math skills decrease dramatically when presented with a clock at each mile marker. I just kept running my race until I hit the 3 mile mark, and i decided to go for a fast finish. Turning the corner onto Conant st. I picked it up around 3 other people and held a pretty fast pace and when within 100 feet of finishing I picked it up more and crossed pretty quickly…Only then did I look at my time… 21:29, which I thought was a PR but didn’t know for sure until later…It Was!!! And without even trying to race real hard…I actually mentioned to Tiff that I felt like the race was downhill the whole time.
Update: Because we went straight home after the race I just found out that I won my age group!!! (25-29) This is the first AG win…ever… It gets better too! Tiff got 3rd in her AG. Now she is 5 months + pregnant right now and still beating lots of girls her age, which I know I’m excited about…
So that was our holiday weekend…busy, but fun, and that’s not all we did, but that would take a lot longer to write, so that’s it for now…
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