Festival Foods 5-mile Turkey Trot

I didn't stand a chance when it came to trotting after turkeys on Thanksgiving morning.

While I was glad I got out and logged the 5 miles and even managed to set a new 5-mile PR, I admit. My head was not in this run. There were probably a couple of reasons.

• I realized at 11 p.m. the night before that while I had my running shoes and an outfit, my Garmin, iPod and Road ID were sitting on the living floor. At my apartment in Oshkosh. While I had my other iPod at my parents' house with me (which was odd since it's been staying in my work bag for the last, oh year), I didn't have any options for a watch. Looks like I'd be running this race naked.
• I went to the race completely solo. My mom - my main support crew - had to stay home. Someone had to watch the turkey or else we'd be eating a charred bird for dinner.
• The first mile? Complete craziness. So crowded.
• It didn't help that my left IT band area was cranky. I think it was due to running hard at the Santa Scamper two days earlier. But it was cranky. And somewhere around Mile 2 (or what I thought felt like Mile 2), it started to let me know it.
• So there were walk breaks. Earlier than I would have liked. And more of them than I would have liked. I kept them fairly short though and kept running. 
• At one point - somewhere after the water stop, so maybe around Mile 3 - I felt like I was running so slow that I was starting to mentally prepare myself for seeing a time greater than one hour when I crossed the finish line. It was at this point that I really mentally checked out. I just didn't seem to care anymore, which is odd for me and not something I've ever experienced in a race. But I kept running. Kept putting one foot in front of the other even though my IT band was screaming.
• The only mile marker I saw was the Mile 4 marker. Once I passed that I knew the end was in sight, so I refused to walk anymore. I ran. It didn't seem fast, but I ran.
• And then there was the finish line. I crossed it, ran into a friend from my Fleet Feet group, grabbed my personal sized pumpkin pie and headed home.

Later in the day, sometime between helping my mom prepare the Thanksgiving feast and watching the Packers beat up on the Lions, I went online and checked my official time: 52:58. Uh, what? Considering the amount of time I spent walking, that was surprising to me. Makes me think I took those first 2-3 miles a lot faster than I thought I was. But I'll never know because my Garmin was hanging out in Oshkosh while I was running in Menasha. And for the record, my previous 5-mile PR (set at the Oshkosh version of the Turkey Trot in 2009) was 54:55, so a nice little improvement. Of course I wonder what kind of time I could have turned in had my head been in the race for the entire 5 miles.

Oh well. Overall it was a tough race mentally, but I'm OK with the end result.

And the turkey I consumed later in the day? So worth it.