Thanksgiving Turkey Trot 2011

Let's start in the middle and we'll come back to the beginning later.  On Wednesday, November 23, 2011 before I went to bed I mentioned to my husband that I was thinking about running in the Thanksgiving Turkey Trot..  It's a 10k around downtown Cincinnati/Newport/Covington annually run by several thousand people.  Up to this I had never run before... in my life.  We went to bed.  In the morning he said, "I thought you were going to run the Turkey 10k".  This seemed to be challenge enough to roust me from bed and head downtown for a 9:00am start.  I had no idea what I was getting into.  

I just got dressed, drove downtown, parked as close to the start zone as I could and set out to find the sign-up area.  It wasn't particularly easy to find, but I found it, signed up and then waited.  And waited.  And waited.  I saw people with signs with numbers on them like 8, 10, 12.  I really had no idea what this all meant.  I saw a sign that said "strollers" and since I have children I decided to head toward them - at least because I fit in with parents.  Later I realized that I had placed myself at the end of the main running pack and ahead of the run/walk pack.  This was actually a good place for me to start.  

At the designated start time not much happened - well, not much from the back of the middle of the pack.  The people out front however had started running.  When my part of the pack started to move, I moved with them. I started out trotting (it was a Turkey trot after all) and crossed the starting line.  I thought here I go.  I had my peppiest songs playing on my iPhone(pod) so I ran for a song.  And then we started up a little hill.  I slowed down and decided to walk for a song.  I did this back and forth until the first major downhill then I ran again through a couple of songs (gravity was now on my side).  I watched my fellow Turkey Trotters and tried to do what they were doing.  

The first mile was fun, in fact, kind of exciting.  The second was also fine.  The third ennui kicked in and I thought "why on earth do people run, this is so boring."  (Later a friend was surprised that I had done the run by myself - she agreed, that would have been boring.)  Mile 4 brought us into Kentucky and I started runner-watching again and was suddenly kind of proud of myself for continuing on this journey.  There was a water hand off around mile 5 then the homestretch brought us back over the Clay Baily bridge back into Ohio.  As a form of torture you go past the finish line, and then loop around the block to come to the finish line.  I put on the song I had started out with (Pitbull, SOMETHING FOR THE DJ - yeah, I know)  and I ran for that whole song until I crossed the finish line.  

The race was over.  For the first time I looked back and realized that I wasn't at the end of the pack.  

At that moment I decided to become a runner.