Turkey Trot: My First 5K

My family went to Branson, Missouri for the week of Thanksgiving. One of our planned activities was whoever wanted to could run in a Turkey Trot  in Springfield (45-60 minutes away). Since I had been aiming on running a 5K in the beginning of December (which I am no longer doing), I figured Thanksgiving wasn't that much sooner so why not.

Tuesday's run went very well. I ran for 35 minutes although not always at my regular stride as to stay with my youngest sister. There were even hills which I haven't ever run on so I was pretty proud of myself. Anyway. Tuesday was really nice. Sun. Warm enough for shorts and no winter running things. This is important because Thursday was only two days later.

Thursday was cold. Cold, cold, cold, and cold. 29 degrees when we were running, if I remember correctly. And, oh my goodness, there were so many people. The announcer said over 7000 people were registered. Everyone got t-shirts, goofy orange turkey hats (which we did not have to wear but my dad insisted on getting them for Valerie's girls who weren't present nor were their parents), and a shoe tracker. Only just over 5000 people wore their shoe trackers. Luckily, it did not rain the entire time we were running.... it started somewhere between miles 2 and 3. I personally had a goal to run it in under 40 minutes. To date I hadn't run 5K at all and since I would be in pants and a jacket ... I didn't know how I would do.

I began the run with Kimmi and Josh. I made sure they knew where we would meet up afterwards since it was likely that we wouldn't stay together. Jared and Kaelyn were waiting inside the building for us (I am told that Kaelyn got many compliments and enjoyed a doughnut). Mom and Dad started after us. I tried running without my iPod and it didn't work out for me. I got too bored. So on it went! Some interesting costumes. A pilgrim and a pumpkin and a boy with super skinny legs and a cape. I was expecting a turkey but didn't see one (not that I saw all 7000 people present). Close to the end of the race, Dad caught up with me. I walked for 30 seconds twice during the race because my nose was causing trouble (and my foot and knee were trying to cause trouble). Other than that, I ran the whole time!

Of course I wanted to know my official time but there were so many people surrounding the printouts hanging on the wall. As was our luck, some tall guys talked over our heads about how the race results were online. Bwahahaha! So we didn't wait. We got breakfast! At IHOP!!! Mom picked it out just for me. Yay! Thank you, Mom!

Here are the stats from the race because, come on, you gotta know them.
Time: 38:05 (average race time was 37:25)(fastest time was 15:25)
Place: 3124/5318
Gender place: 1459/3007
Age division place: 165/266 (ages 20-24)(fastest time in my div was 18:32 and was the 2nd fasted overall female running time)

My dad: 35:38
My mom: 41:23
(Shout out to my parents who ran the whole entire thing without stopping or walking!)
Josh: 40:00
Kimmi: 40:02

Go family!

My goal now? To beat my dad.... (Dad, DO NOT READ THIS.)

Here we are in our shirts, not right after our race but before we showered.

And I just had to show this picture to help show how Josh kept foiling our picture taking efforts.