Bright and early on Thanksgiving morning I bundled up with ~3000 other insane Coloradoans for the Fort Collins Thanksgiving Day Run. When I woke up, the temperature was 7 degrees. Seven. By the start of the race, things had warmed up to a toasty 13. Wheee! Coldest. Start. Ever. Plus, I was wearing the Vibrams, so my toes were pretty much frozen for the first two miles.
I forgot my watch (brilliant) so had to run by feel. During my test run last week, I managed a 34:15 on the dreadmill, so I was hoping to do better than that. With no watch however, I wasn’t sure how I would do. Basically, once the race started I just ran as fast as I could before barf threshold. I’ve been working more and more on finding my “orange line” – the pace I can go without failing for any given distance. I don’t know my splits, but it felt like mile 1 was a little fast (to be expected), mile 2 slowed down some, then miles 3 and 4 picked up respectively. Somewhere around mile three, I saw a large, brown object in my peripheral vision. I glanced to the side to see a ginormous turkey trundling along next to me. Oh no. I categorically refuse to be beaten by a person in a huge turkey suit. Absolutely not. So I put the pedal down and passed that gobbler. I crossed the line in 32:03, which pretty much blows my previous 4 mile time out of the water (38:xx in 2008). Not only that, but it kills my first 5k time (33:15) as well. Woot, watch me getting (slowly) faster!
Thanksgiving dinner was, predictably, delicious. On Friday, instead of continued gluttonous wallowing, Matt and I headed out with the Japh for some Comanche wilderness romping. We hiked up Donner Pass (not THE Donner pass, where they ate each other, but another pass they passed). 5 miles of snow hiking and Japhy was wiped. I will have to revisit this area for some trail running this summer!
The rest of the weekend was somewhat of a workout wash (mmmm, turkey), but I’m looking forward to more running this week.
Happy Running!
32:03
Smooth Moves 
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