Ahhh...Thanksgiving morning! I can almost smell turkey roasting in the oven...dressing cooking on the stove...and I can't wait to have round 2 of Thanksgiving dinner! However, first things first. I signed up to run in the Silicon Valley Turkey Trot this year. The event was a 5k (3.1 mile) walk or run or a 10k (6.2 mile) walk or run. It'll be the first year I've participated in it and I was looking forward to it. A few new friends of mine that I have met through TNT were also participating in it, and to be honest, without them, I wouldn't have done it. I wasn't going to do it alone, and no one else I know particularly likes to run like I do now, so it's great to have them on my team;)
The race was starting a 9am in downtown San Jose. The plan for me was to wake up at 6am and give myself a little time to do the usual routine before any run... eat, drink, release;), and this particular morning I wanted to use the foam roller on my calves because they were in knots. Light stretching is usually done right before I start running, (deeper stretching after). Not a big deal since this was only 6 miles this time. My friend Carla was picking me up 7:45am and we were going to head over to another team mates house to pick her up.
The night before, I get to bed late as usual, it never fails...I have a hard time going to bed early. But none the less I set my alarm and get into bed and go to sleep. Well, the next morning I open my eyes to the clock reading 7:15am. What the *^!-'# ! I can't even tell you what happened because I don't even know. This is another thing that seems to never fail...when I have somewhere really important to go to, my alarm mysteriously doesn't go off on time. I'm done fighting it...we won't even go there...
However, I QUICKLY get myself together, not able to do any of the routine except get dressed and washed up, and get picked up by Carla and Nicole(she is another Team friend who was coming to support instead of run because she was running in the Seattle full marathon that Sunday). We get over to Stephanie's house and all of us pile into her car and make our way to the event downtown. I'm starting to learn that these running events are all pretty much the same in the fact that you get to the location while everyone else is getting to the location and you run into some people you know, a lot of people you don't know and then roam around for a little bit and then wait to start. Oh, wait, I forgot...most-likely you stand in line to wait to use the porto-pottys before you start running;)
Ok, so at about 9 something we cross the start. Carla, Melissa and I start out together... Stephanie had decided to walk this time with her daughter and grandson, so she was with that group. Then quickly into it, Melissa has past us and it's just Carla and I, and a bunch of people we didn't know:) We started near St. John Street and headed North up onto Market then Taylor....and through the Guadalupe River Park. The weather was perfect, nice and crisp and the sun came out a bit:)
I'm so grateful to Carla for running with me and keeping me at the 10 minute mile pace. I struggled a little since I was relying only on the water stops and didn't really have much fuel with me that day. The trail was nice but got a little crowded at the points where the walkers and runners would coincide. If the trail or pathway was narrow at that point, than the walkers tended to spread out and get in the way of us runners who tried to pass on the left. Once you're in a groove with your running, it's very hard to stop, especially for people getting in your way, hahah.
So we make it through and round up onto Julian St. then onto Santa Clara and finished a little past HP Pavilion/Shark Tank! We crossed the finish at 1:03:01...woohoo! We were greeted by Nicole with camera in hand:)
Derek was so close to getting to the finish before we crossed but of course parking was crazy down there. So he arrived minutes later to walked around a little while we got all of our "finishers chochski"! We didn't stay long because it was Turkey Day after all and
we had to get ready to head up to San Francisco for the family celebration!
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