SV Turkey Trot 10K Race Report
Happy Thanksgiving! Kevin and I started the day off right with the Silicon Valley Turkey Trot 10K. We had good weather, about 55 degrees, and the rain held off. I was amazed to realize that there were 21,000 people participating between the 10K and 5K events, it was huge! It's nice to see so many people out running. Kev wore his Detroit Turkey Trot shirt in spirit of the day.
I didn't go to the expo, so I went to Sports Basement on Tuesday afternoon for packet pick-up. There were tons of people, and the SB staff handled the traffic flow by directing people to parking spots and in/out of the lot. Pickup was very smooth for me, although I'd say make sure to have your bib number on hand to avoid waiting in line to look it up. I grabbed our bibs, waited in a short line for shirts, and was out in about 15 minutes total. The race shirt is a nice longsleeve tech tee by Green Layer.
Today we left our condo around 7 am for the 7:50 am race start - how nice it was to live in walking distance from the start! The start was fairly crowded but well controlled, and there was no line for the porta potties. Except for needing a TV studio van to move out of the way first, the start was very smooth for runners. The course didn't feel too crowded and I could run the pace I wanted - until the end. More on that later.
I enjoyed running in San Jose because I'm familiar with the area and we even went by our condo. There were some spectators, though not a lot, and a few bands and cheer groups along the way. Water stops were generally well set up and stocked to grab water while running by. The course was super flat, by far the flattest 10K I've run.
As for running, I had a rough start for the first 4 miles because my legs felt like bricks. I'm familiar with this from the summer when I was training for the triathlon - being on the bike tends to give me that feeling and I'm sure it will until I get used to it again. My heart rate was higher than I'd like too, so I took a couple of 30 second walk breaks to bring it down. I came through the mile 4 timing mat averaging 10:13 minutes/mile, and by then I was finally feeling settled. I dropped my pace by 30-45 seconds per mile for miles 5 and 6, and I was feeling awesome!
Then came the end. I wasn't on track for a PR or even a great pace, but I would have been around 1:04 had I finished at the pace I was running. Sadly, there was a HUGE bottleneck at the end and I had to stop running quite a bit before I got to the timing mat. From there, the crowd slowly walked to the end. My final time ended up at 1:06:32, so I lost a couple of minutes in the wait to finish. I was bummed at first, but I let it go because everything else about the race was super fun. I'd totally do it again for a fantastic start to Thanksgiving day!
Here I am being happy post race, after a quick trip to Peets for coffee on the walk home. (Again, yay for walking to and from a race start!) I wore my favorite Nike cotton Dri-Fit half-zip from the Chicago Marathon and an older Lululemon running tight with cute ruching at the calf and ankle.
Oh yeah, and the shirt is cat approved too...meet my cute Japanese Bobtail kitty, Akai!
I didn't go to the expo, so I went to Sports Basement on Tuesday afternoon for packet pick-up. There were tons of people, and the SB staff handled the traffic flow by directing people to parking spots and in/out of the lot. Pickup was very smooth for me, although I'd say make sure to have your bib number on hand to avoid waiting in line to look it up. I grabbed our bibs, waited in a short line for shirts, and was out in about 15 minutes total. The race shirt is a nice longsleeve tech tee by Green Layer.
Today we left our condo around 7 am for the 7:50 am race start - how nice it was to live in walking distance from the start! The start was fairly crowded but well controlled, and there was no line for the porta potties. Except for needing a TV studio van to move out of the way first, the start was very smooth for runners. The course didn't feel too crowded and I could run the pace I wanted - until the end. More on that later.
I enjoyed running in San Jose because I'm familiar with the area and we even went by our condo. There were some spectators, though not a lot, and a few bands and cheer groups along the way. Water stops were generally well set up and stocked to grab water while running by. The course was super flat, by far the flattest 10K I've run.
As for running, I had a rough start for the first 4 miles because my legs felt like bricks. I'm familiar with this from the summer when I was training for the triathlon - being on the bike tends to give me that feeling and I'm sure it will until I get used to it again. My heart rate was higher than I'd like too, so I took a couple of 30 second walk breaks to bring it down. I came through the mile 4 timing mat averaging 10:13 minutes/mile, and by then I was finally feeling settled. I dropped my pace by 30-45 seconds per mile for miles 5 and 6, and I was feeling awesome!
Then came the end. I wasn't on track for a PR or even a great pace, but I would have been around 1:04 had I finished at the pace I was running. Sadly, there was a HUGE bottleneck at the end and I had to stop running quite a bit before I got to the timing mat. From there, the crowd slowly walked to the end. My final time ended up at 1:06:32, so I lost a couple of minutes in the wait to finish. I was bummed at first, but I let it go because everything else about the race was super fun. I'd totally do it again for a fantastic start to Thanksgiving day!
Here I am being happy post race, after a quick trip to Peets for coffee on the walk home. (Again, yay for walking to and from a race start!) I wore my favorite Nike cotton Dri-Fit half-zip from the Chicago Marathon and an older Lululemon running tight with cute ruching at the calf and ankle.
Oh yeah, and the shirt is cat approved too...meet my cute Japanese Bobtail kitty, Akai!
Hooray for kitty approved clothing :) Glad the race went pretty good!
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