Turkey Trot Race Recap

I am sorry this is late.  Whenever I go out of town for the weekend, I tend to take a break from technology, especially at my parents' house where there is no wifi or networked internet connection, just the one desktop.  With this past weekend being the official start of Christmas shopping, most of my time spent online was shopping.  In fact, my mom and I had our Gymboree/Janie and Jack orders placed by 11:30pm Wednesday night, since the Black Friday specials had already gone live.  This was great, becauase I was able to get to bed a little earlier than I thought I would for the Thanksgiving day race.  The kids got to bed a bit later than they should since they were racing too.  There race was before mine, so we got there about an hour before my race started, and a half hour before theirs.  This meant we got awesome parking.  It was pretty cold, so we hung tight in the car for a bit, and then dropped off a bunch of old shoes and a toy to donate. 

Then, we met up with my friend Amanda, who was in town for Thanksgiving too.  Her daughter was running in the children's race as well.  They tried to get the kids organized into age groups and passed out felt turkeys to designate their wave, but it was pretty disorganized because kids just started getting lined up early (including us).  They finally got us broken up into waves, and then the kids were off!  I was trying to run and take pictures, and accidently stepped on a boy and my mom had to help him put his shoe back on so I could keep going with Keira and Soren.  They crossed the finish line and received medals and cookies.

Then it was time for my race.  It was pretty cold, and I felt like I was rushed getting over to the starting line.  It was a hurry up and wait, though, because they didn't stop registration on time and as a result, weren't ready to start on time.  It didn't start too late, but since it was freezing, everyone was anxious to get going.  There were over 4000 people signed up for the 5 mile race!  We were finally off and running, and I realized that I started too far back.  It was super crowded for about the first quarter mile, and I was able to run on the sidewalk to make up a little bit of ground.  We also started running downhill, which meant I knew we would be running uphill to finish.  The  entire first mile ended up being downhill.  We ran through Ohio State's campus, including the stadium.  It was a nice course.  I was really shocked at how many fast people there were, and how big some of the fast runners were.  I know that I could have been quite a bit faster if I had not completed so many half marathons last month and been better rested/recovered, but I was able to squeak out a PR (if you don't include the first 5 miles of my better half marathons) of 38:10.  It was good enough for a pie, which went to the top 1000 female (and male) finishers for a total of 2000 pies in the 5 mile event.  I was actually in the top 100 females.  They had 10 year age groups (and no age group awards anyway), but I was 21st out of 506.  If I counted those in my 5 year age group, I was 10th.  I didn't count to see how the total would have changed, though.  Not too bad for a tired run!  I still feel like I am in recovery mode from last month, and while I didn't run on Wednesday to prepare, I did swim just because this race was for fun.  The kids were also really excited about it. 

We had a great Thanksgiving, where I just felt like I ate and ate and ATE! 
Here are the pies that Ryan's mom and I made (I made the apple and pumpkin, she made the German chocolate in the middle):

I am now on full on diet recovery mode, and starting to feel a bit better.  It was such a busy weekend, though, that I am still pretty tired.  We did not go to Best Buy on Thursday evening, because Ryan was able to find just about everything we wanted online.  We did go out Friday evening for a date, and popped in there.  It was still pretty crazy, and we managed to get the final video game on sale, but could not get our $40 blu ray player.  We ended up with a $67 one instead, and it looks to be a nicer player than the less expensive one.  We saw Twilight Breaking Dawn.

That is pretty much all for now!  I should have a product review this week, once I can get things back under control after being out of town.  I didn't put any of my workouts into daily mile last week, and have been enjoying doing flip turns in the pool. Although, it seems to make my sinuses worse with all the extra water I get in my face.  I had a neti pot like draining happen a few times when I bent over to put on my shoes after getting out of the pool  Gross!  I also can't keep track of my laps as well.  Any tips on this?