Turkey Trot Fun Run

We started our Thanksgiving morning with a Turkey Trot just like we have the past few years. Read about last year's race here, 2015's race here, 2014's race here, and 2013's race here. I opted out of the 5k this year since I had just run a marathon 4 days earlier. By Wednesday I was feeling pretty much recovered and started to wish I'd gone ahead and signed up for the 5k even though I hadn't run since the marathon. Wednesday night I told Carter we'd have to leave early for the fun run and asked him if he wanted me to wake him up to go if he was still sleeping. He said he did. Once Thursday morning came and I was rolling out of bed in order to get to the race start by 7:30 for the fun run, I was glad I wasn't running the 5k. I let the kids sleep until the last minute and probably let them sleep a little too long. We barely made it to the race start on time so Ty dropped me and the kids off and headed out to park the car. Elise always gets scared by how loud the race start is so she wanted me to pick her up and carry her for the race. Carter took off running but kept looking back at me and asked me to run with him. I tried to run behind him while carrying Elise and it was pretty difficult. We ended up all walking together for a while. We saw Ty walk up to spectate so I asked him to take Elise so I could run with Carter. At that point Carter had lost interest in running and decided he wanted to keep walking. I saw some kids coming up behind us and told Carter. He looked back and saw them and wanted to run the rest of the way. As we were approaching the finish line we saw and heard Oma and then saw Jeremy. When we ran past Jeremy we saw Thomas was with him. Carter was really excited to see them and really picked up the pace at the end. The way my legs felt as we sped up, I was definitely glad I wasn't running the 5k. Carter finished the race in 13:22. I was pretty surprised considering how much we walked at the beginning of the race. When Ty walked past my mom with Elise, Elise decided she wanted Oma to carry her to the finish.

 

The 5k started with confetti raining down over the racers. Carter and Elise both loved the confetti and had so much fun playing with it as everyone else ran the race. Jeremy told me the night before that he was planning on just running the race as an easy recovery run coming back from the marathon. Thomas had just run the half so I figured he'd recover a little better than Jeremy and expected him to finish before Jeremy. While we watched for everyone to finish, Elise was walking with her hands in her pockets and fell so her face bounced off the ground. It took quite a while to get her calmed down after that. I was shocked to see Jeremy coming up to the finish at about 21 minutes. I guess his easy paced run was a little bit faster than what I consider easy! He finished in 22:19 which put him 61st out of 1,309 overall and 8th out of 47 in his age group. Thomas finished next in 24:02 which put him 103rd overall and 5th of 47 in his age group. Dad finished in 24:40 which was 126th overall and 3rd out of 32 in his age group. Mom finished in 35:01, 685th overall and 10th of 27 in her age group. Everyone seemed to enjoy the race. Carter and Elise also enjoyed cheering everyone on.

 

 

After the race we enjoyed some coffee, hot chocolate, and Krispy Kreme doughnuts. As we were eating, Carter asked if we could go in the building we waited for awards in last year. We went inside city hall and Carter wanted to explore like he had last year. We started in the basement and went up the stairs all the way to the top of the building which was on the 6th floor. Then we went back down and up to the top all over again. My legs had been feeling mostly recovered from the marathon until all those trips up and down the stairs. The first time dad went with us and then the second time Jeremy did. When we made it to the top with Jeremy, he told Carter he would only do that once. We ended up taking the elevator back down. It was fun to see Carter enjoy exploring so much. It reminded me of when we were kids and would go with my dad up to his work so we could walk around and explore the building.

 

 

Dad with his age group award, a mug.

On the way home the early morning wake up got to Elise and she fell asleep. She ended up waking up as Ty carried her into the house. Dad loved his mug and used it multiple times over the weekend as he enjoyed tea. We enjoyed a delicious Thanksgiving dinner that evening. Elise ate mostly fruit and cranberries which surprised me, but Carter ate a wide range of foods and really loved the sweet potato. When sweet potatoes were on sale at Aldi I bought a bag. I baked them on Monday when we got back and Elise has eaten at least 2 entire sweet potatoes on her own this week. I was surprised she was all about the plain sweet potatoes after turning down sweet potatoes topped with marshmallow at Thanksgiving dinner. It was a delicious meal that topped a great day!