Race Report, Naperville Turkey Trot; November 25, 2010

Naperville Lion's Club Turkey Trot, November 25, 2010: 08:00

Conditions: Low clouds and mist, 38F (3C)

There were 6131 people who completed the Turkey Trot, with a best time of 14:54 and the slowest time of 1:06:12. The complete results can be found here.

With so many people, the start was quite slow. They asked the runners to self-sort themselves into groups based on their expected pace, from 6:00/mi to 12:00/mi in 1:00 steps. This stretched out for about 3oo yards down the road! I decided to take a spot about 200 yards from the starting line, just behind the group at the 10:00/mi placard. My goal was to get close to 12:00/mi for the entire race--a very aggressive goal!

The gun sounded at 8:00 sharp, and we all tried to move forward, to no avail. Slowly, slowly we sauntered to the starting line. Oh, so slowly! It took me approximately 8 minutes to reach the starting line!

My initial pace was just over 10:00/mile, as I expected it would be (adrinaline and all that). This quickly came down to a more sustainable 11:30/mile. There was a lot of weaving--it seems that 10% of the folks decided to run for long enough to be able to say that they "ran the Turkey Trot," and then walk, side by side with 5 of their closest friends and talk about life, the universe and everything. These barriers kept appearing over and over again--it was very frustrating for me.

I had my Garmin GPS/HRM set to auto-lap at 0.5 mile increments so I could keep track of my average pace in a meaningful way. I was able to maintain the sub-12:00/mi pace for the first 1.5 miles!

For some reason, my legs felt very heavy this morning. I tried not to think about it too much.

On Marty's advice, I also tried not to think about my heart rate, but rather focus on my pace (only). I was keenly aware of my heart pumping, but it never seemed to be stressing out. So I perserveered!

Aurora Special Olympics Run for the Athletes 5K, Saturday November 6, 2010

I completed this race in good condition! Final time: 39:50 (according to the timing) or 39:41 (according to my Garmin Forerunner).

Best part: I won first prize in the raffle!

Here are the data from the Forerunner, first the heart rate and pace:

And the summary information: