The Turkey Trotted

Well Kids, this is my first post in awhile, So i will try and make it good. Basically Barb and I have been avoiding to start training for CMM. We have used every excuse in the book not to run. But yesterday, that was put to an end. We ran the Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving morning. This is going to be the start of our training, I think.

Honestly, this has been an event that we have not been looking forward to because we haven't been running at all. So that morning, we drug ourselves out of bed and got ready. You could tell we were not pleased at all to get up. We also had no idea what to freakin wear, because the weather in chicago has been so weird lately. But we got our stuff together and went on our way.

After taking forever to get to the parking lot, we decided to park all the way on the other side of the lot. Last year it took barb over an hour to get out of the lot. Even though we were running very late, we still decided to park 10 minutes away from the start line. Once we parked we were 5 minutes away from the gun. But we really didn't care to much. It seemed like we were purposefully trying to miss the race. Well, we actually made it on time. Lucky us.

Once we got to the start line, the race basically began. Well actually, after it took us 6 minutes to cross the start line, then it began. The start was more of a mental game for me. I knew that this was going to be the start of another training session. I even said that I was going to take this race easy. During the first 3/4 of a mile, I was running with barb. After telling barb that I didn't care how fast i could do this, and that I would love to be the last person to finish in my age group. My competative side started to take over. I started to get annoyed with my performance. So I turned to barb and said I gotta go. And she said of course, have a great race.

At this point, I forced myself to pick it up. I started to weave inbetween people and I just took off. It was like I just flicked a switch. Thats how fast things changed for me. The race ended up being pretty fun. Well except for the Crazy Stroller Lady who was running into people on the race route. Around mile 3, this lady rammed her stroller into the back of my leg and of course I was not happy. I turned around and had some delightful words to say to her. I even said come on lady, its a fun run. Let me just say, that she was not pleased with what I said. People around us were not pleased with her either. I have no problem with people running with strollers, but I do have a problem when they are running into others, forcing others to the side and just being plain rude. She shortly took off running her stroller of pain into other people after both of us gave our closing statements to each other. Lady, what a great role model you are going to be to your child.

Well besides the worlds greatest mother out there, the race was a great one to kick off CMM training. I was actually pretty surprised to see the finish line clock. I finished in 50:31. My last 8k didn't count because i pulled a friend through it, but my previous one was 1:03:43. I'm surprised how well I did after not running for a month, and how great I feel. Go me.