Chattanooga Turkey Trot

So, I kind-of forgot to write up this race right away because it didn't really register as a 'race' in my head having neither characteristic I usually attribute to that word - 'long distance' or 'on trail'.  But it was, indeed a race, so I will log it here largely to do me being strangely ocd about unimportant things - like not leaving out a race of a race blog, even if I don't remember to write about it till 3 weeks after the fact.  (If only I could be ocd about things like getting papers written by the deadlines I set for myself or important school tasks...)

The race was the 8k Turkey Trot in Chattanooga on Thanksgiving day.  It's a smaller-ish race - only about 1,000 people (compared to the 23,000+ of the Austin Turkey Trot, it's comparably small).  I realized kind-of last minute that I could do it and still get to Thanksgiving dinner at my sister's in-laws (where we've done Thanksgiving dinner for the last 13-14 years or so) in Cleveland, TN on time.  So, I drove up to the Sports Barn and registered the morning of.  I had a good time, though nothing too eventful happened.  The course was nearly completely flat except for a few small hills.  My goal going in was to do it in sub-35 minutes or in other words sub-7-minute miles.  I felt fairly confident that I could maintain that pace having had run the 7-mile loop at Town Lake here in Austin a few weeks back at a 7:05 pace.

Anyway, not very long story very short, I achieved my goal, running a 33:50 (6:47/mile) time and as an added bonus, got 3rd in my age group, which won me a nice little pair of running gloves that I will use if winter ever decides to make its way to Austin.

Another added bonus was running into my elementary PE coach, Coach Cutrer.  He was awesome as a PE coach, and interestingly, his wife was one who was involved in my very early running days.  I have a picture somewhere of us back in ~1990, me as a 5th grader wearing my gigantic mauve (they were NOT pink, they were mauve) glasses and holding an age-group trophy I won (don't remember what place) for a 5k I'd run at UTC. 

Afterward, the best part of the day came when I got to see my nieces, their parents and my parents all of whom I hadn't seen since March.  And of course, the eating part was pretty awesome too.  I love Thanksgiving.