Turkey Trot

It's been a few wonderful days.  First, a photo of Jack after his surgery.  They operated on Wednesday morning and as of Thursday afternoon, they were taking him off the ventilator and he was breathing on his own.  Amazing.  He's doing great.

Then, there was the Turkey Trot.  The weather was not great.  It was mid-60s when we left the house, but mid-50s when the race started, and mid-40s when the race ended.  The wind was insane.  There were a few drops of rain while we waited to start, but it never really rained.  Fortunately for me, it was overcast.  I think sun is one of my biggest running nemeses. 

I got to see several friends at the start and it was a lot of fun.  Unfortunately, I never found Kiran, my weekday buddy who I was hoping to run with.  In the end, it was just as well -- he cranked out an amazingly fast time, and I ran with a weekend buddy and we had fun together. 

This is one of the worst race starts of any race I've ever run.  The last few years, there's been an extra charge if you want to be timed and the theory is that all timed runners start ahead of the untimed, meaning ahead of most walkers and strollers.  But it's always chaos and untimed people go way up to the front.  I was with Joy and my friend Rich and we were near the 6 min per mile sign.  Knowing full well there was no way we'd go that fast, but also knowing we were too far back.  We moved up a bit more before the race started, yet just as the gun was about to go off, we realized there was a woman in jeans directly in front of us.  Nice.  So our first mile was more weaving than I've ever done in a race (except of course this race in years past). 

Anyway, mile 1 was the slowest of the day.  2 and 3 were too fast.  Slowed down for 4 (hills), picked it back up for 5, then slowed it down to hit 6 (hills again).  Climbed the last hill and hit 7 on the downhill and Rich and I decided to split up, he was going to push for it.  I tried very briefly to keep up with him, but there was no hope.  I focused instead on passing a woman pushing a stroller who had passed us around 4.5.  I knew I had a PR in the bag, and I caught her and had mile 8 as my fastest mile of the morning (2-3 secs ahead of miles 2 and 3). 

Not sure if I actually had a negative split or not, haven't done the math, but my slowest mile was mile 1 and my fastest mile was mile 8, and that's a win in my book.  I found Rich at the finish line and the topic of the stroller woman came up.  He said she was his first target when we split, but unfortunately he overheard her in conversation after we all finished and it sounded like she'd just done an Ironman.  Ugh.  What a machine! 

It was a great running morning, my hubby also had a PR and is on track for a strong race at the White Rock half next weekend. 

I need to decide today if I'm going to sign up or not since, out of principle, I don't want to pay the higher price that goes into effect tomorrow.  I think I probably will...

Anyway, got home and started cooking.  We were pretty much on track to be ready around 2:30 or 3:00, but my cousin and his family were running late.  Very late as it turned out.  My cousin and his father-in-law and his three girls came around 3:45, then his wife and mother-in-law came around 4:45.  So we kind of had to reheat everything, but it worked out well.  The girls did some coloring crafts while we waited and we hung around drinking and talking. 

Dinner was good.  Lots of food and wine.  And because they were running late, we had a chance to run the dishwasher during the two hour delay, so it was empty after the meal, making clean-up much easier. 

Today is a bit of cleaning and hopefully getting the tree up in a couple hours, then a lunch of leftovers!  Hoping to go for a jog this afternoon.  As much as I don't like being really cold when I run, it's nice to be able to run in the afternoon sometimes!