chesterbrook | The Little GSP

Yesterday morning I kicked off Thanksgiving with a turkey trot 5K race in Chesterbrook, PA. This was my second year running the Seven Summits Turkey Trot and I’m pleased to report that I finished nearly 2 minutes faster than last year! Also, I had a fantastic cheering section… Matt and Piper came to watch!

The park was covered in snow from Wednesday’s storm and the weather was a brisk 34°, but the paved course was clear and I was dressed warmly in my new birthday tights and vest (thanks Mom!) so I didn’t mind the conditions. The race began at 9:15am and I took off with 553 other runners, eager to put down a good time on the relatively flat course.

I completed the first mile in 7:24 which is actually a little slower than I was hoping to go out. I remember thinking that I wanted to go faster, but my legs felt sort of stiff and heavy and just didn’t want to pick up the pace. (I guess due to the cold?? I warmed up but then stood around waiting at the start for a long time.) Mile 2 was a similar effort at 7:36 and Mile 3 ended up a little slower at 7:54. (In mile 3’s defense, however, it was all uphill!) Despite the slow down in mile 3 I still managed to cross the finish line with an official time of 23:40, just 8 seconds slower than my personal best!

Matt and Piper were waiting for me at the finish line. Piper had kept herself busy during the race greeting dozens of people and meeting a few other spectating dogs (even one GSP!) so she was quite content to curl up on my lap on our drive home. All in all this was a great way to start off the holiday and I definitely hope to keep doing turkey trots on Thanksgiving mornings in the future!

My next two races are both in West Chester, PA next weekend. I will be running the 2 mile Jingle Elf Run on Friday night and the 5 mile Brian’s Run on Sunday afternoon. Hopefully my legs will feel a little quicker for the short distance on Friday! 🙂

Miles since last post: 95.1
Days since last post: 19
Avg. Daily Miles since 7/18/13: 4.87
2014 TOTAL MILES: 1620

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• Trinity Berwyn 5K (11/1/14) [New PR!]
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• Fueled Up & Fired Up 5K (10/18/14)
• Martin’s Run 5K (10/5/14)
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• New Year’s Eve 5K at the YMCA (12/31/13) [PR]
• Athlete’s Closet December 5K (12/14/13)
• Turkey Trot 5K (11/28/13)
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• Oy Vey 5K (10/27/13) [PR]
• Fueled Up & Fired Up 5K (10/19/13)
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Happy Thanksgiving! Matt and I kicked off our holiday weekend at 8:45am with the Seven Summits 5K Turkey Trot in Chesterbrook, PA. Well actually we didn’t end up kicking anything off at 8:45 because the race started extremely late… What I really should say is that we stood around with 595 other runners for 30 minutes in the windy 29°F weather before kicking our weekend off at 9:15! 🙂 The cold wait obviously didn’t slow Matt down… he was one of the top 100 finishers and his 23:53 finishing time was a 28 second personal best!

My race wasn’t too shabby, either. I finished in 25:23 which was good enough for 56th female (out of 317). Overall, I’m happy with that because of the wind and frigid temps, but I have to admit that my goal going into the race was to run sub-25 so I’m a tiny bit sad that I didn’t do that. Not too sad though, because I still came within a mere 7 seconds of my personal best! Plus, now I feel that much more determined to run even faster in our next 5K on December 15th!!

Here are my RunKeeper stats for the race. Probably my most even-paced race so far… I was attempting to go out nice and steady and maintain an 8:00-ish pace for the entire race (which would have given me my desired sub-25 time) but I couldn’t quite keep that pace up. In my next race I think I’ll go back to the strategy of going out more aggressively in the first mile and finishing with whatever I have left.

As I mentioned before there were several hundred people in the race so after we finished we didn’t stick around. Instead we hopped in the car, cranked up the heat, and went out for bagels and coffee. Oh, but we were well disciplined and did run a little cool down in the bagel shop’s parking lot before going in to eat. I’m sure the people in the shop thought we were nuts! Here I am on the drive home with my coffee. I was very happy to be done running and ready to start the Thanksgiving festivities!