Today, Thanksgiving Day, my alarm clock went off just before 8 AM, waking me up in time to wash up and eat something (cherry yogurt, yum!), and then my dad, my brother, and I headed off to Cook Park in nearby Tigard. This was the site of the Uberthons' Turkeython, a 1K/5K/10K race. My brother went along as a cheerleader/spectator, and my dad and I both ran the 5K.
We arrived at 9 AM, in plenty of time for the 9:30 AM start. Portland has been getting a lot of rain lately, and the park itself was fairly muddy. Fortunately, there was a well-timed break in the rain that lasted from early this morning to about 11 AM. It was still cold (~38 degrees) but a bit of warm-up jogging made it feel reasonably tolerable. (I wore shorts, a T-shirt, and a long-sleeve T-shirt.)
There were several hundred racers, and seeing as how I had lined up near the back of the pack, it took something like 5 or 6 minutes before I got started. The organizers would ring a bell and let about 5-10 runners go, wait 10-20 seconds, and ring the bell again. However, this was a chip-timed race, so everyone's racing bib had an RFID chip to provide individual times.
I got off to a decent start and kept to a somewhat comfortable pace. (In retrospect, perhaps it was too comfortable, in that my best times on the treadmill have been somewhat uncomfortable paces, which I guess is not that surprising.) I started passing a lot of people, which felt empowering. The entire time, only one person -- a teen female -- passed me, although I'm sure that the really fast runners had started off well ahead of me, so that the path wouldn't be clogged by slower runners in front of them.
The racing path was on a paved trail in the park, and it was well marked. Since I had forgotten to check my watch when I started, I had only a vague idea of how much time I had spent running when I crossed a marker with a big "1" on it. This confused me momentarily, because I was pretty sure that I had run more than 1 kilometer -- or else I was really going to suck on this run. The website depiction of the course had said they would be putting down mile markers, but the backside of the marker read "4," so I thought perhaps one side was indicating 1 kilo finished, and the other side was marking 4 kilos left.
Anyway, when I hit the "2" marker, I figured out that they were mile markers, because the backside of this one read "5." Now that I think about it, this was probably to turn around to help out the 10K runners for their second time through the course.
When I had only a half kilometer or so left, I picked up my pace, and I sprinted the last 0.1 kilometer for the finish:
Someone handed me a bottle of water, and I found my brother standing near the portable outdoor heater. We chatted a bit, and then I went to collect my participation prize -- a pumpkin roll! My dad eventually came into view, so I went over to the end part of the course and cheered him on. He was thinking that he had hope of winning his age group -- on the assumption that there was a 70-79 year old age group -- because he saw few seniors. Alas, the age groups only go up to 60+.
As we headed back to the minivan (after he collected a cranberry roll), it started to drizzle, so that really was perfect timing, and a nice brisk way to start the day. Now bring on the turkey!
UPDATE: Yet another photo of me, taken by the race organizers. I'm smiling because I was having fun, but also because I ran at too comfortable of a pace. Must go faster! My final time was 24:23, which was 55th overall (out of 388).
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