2011 Garden City Turkey Trot

Today I ran the 34th Garden City Turkey Trot. The five mile run started at 10 AM, allowing me to sleep to a normal hour. My mom and my sister accompanied chauffeured me to the race. Garden City is a mess on Thanksgiving morning, with people wandering around and roads blocked. Unless you can run to the race, I highly recommend coercing your family to drive you.

This year was the first year the Garden City Turkey Trot used a bib timing system allowing runners to get a net time instead of a just a gun time. This means that we cross a starting line and a finish line, and your time is the time it takes you to get from one to another. Last year runners were shoving each other to get closer to the front, so this is quite an improvement.

I tried to take it easy and run at a strong, but not overly taxing pace. Knowing the route really helped. I don't feel like I raced this race, but I'm happy with how I did.

I picked up the pace for the final mile. This is a lovely shot of me that I illegally screenshot found on the Internet.

Repping my Brooklyn Marathon shirt.

 My mom and sister found me after I used the porta-potty. I had been waiting in line for one when I got nervous that the race would start without me. I spent five miles really having to pee. My mom thought that this photo would be particularly fitting because she said I "spend a lot of time porta-potties." It's true. I always have to pee.

After the race we came home to sit on the couch. One of my family members (whom I may or may not be speaking to at this time) was in my bathroom, so I put off taking a shower to eat Italian meat products instead. It was delicious. (Good thing we have two more of these bad boys in the refrigerator.) 

My sister was appalled that I took a photo
of myself eating a container full of meat.

Then I took a long nice nap on the couch and played with my cats. Around 3:30 I finally took a shower so my family wouldn't have to smell me during dinner. We had a typical Thanksgiving feast.

A "personal-size" apple raspberry crumb pie from Jericho Cider Mill

I am thankful for a lot of things this Thanksgiving, including but not limited to Brooks running shoes, frozen golf balls, my sarcastic sister, overweight cats, and 34 year-olds who date younger girls.

Did you Turkey Trot this year? Post your run and photos below.

Garden City Turkey Trot

Team RUNNUR completed its first Garden City Turkey Trot today.  In its 33rd year, the GC Turkey Trot had the most participants ever with more than 3,000 runners. The five mile race began at St. Paul's School and followed a scenic course through Garden City. Spectators lined the course shouting encouraging words, waving signs and noisemakers, and even playing the Rocky theme song. This is my favorite race I've ran up to date.

I was very excited for this race and put a lot of effort into my running outfit. When you look good, you feel good, and when you feel good, you do good. I wore one of my C9 sports bras (so comfortable) with my new Under Armour pullover. I went old school with a pair of Nike spandex I've had since my days on the Choate cross country team. I also wore an old pair of running sneakers (Nikes), hoping that the lighter-weight shoe would be more efficient than those Lunar Glides I've been wearing. I think I made good choices because I felt comfortable throughout the 5 mile run, although the spandex did ride up around mile 2.

The positive energy at this race was awesome. My legs were getting heavy as I started the fifth mile, but then these little girls yelled out, "You can do it!" and "Girl Power!" Realizing I was the only girl in this pack of runners, I didn't want to disappoint them and dug deep to push forward. Then a man told us we were only 200 yards from the finish line and I dug even deeper to give it my all. I came in at 37:23.2. I was 350th out of the 3,168 runners who completed the course. I would have preferred to come in under 36 minutes, but now I know my goal for next year.

I am also really psyched that I ran into a friend from college at the race. He's not a native Long Islander and I didn't expect to see him there. This was the best way to start Thanksgiving and I plan on trotting every year from now on.


Team RUNNUR before the race began.