Turkey Trot, er, Walk

On a whim last week, I suggest that we participate in the 2010 Blue Ridge Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving morning. Despite no training or even no desire on my part to actually run, I thought it could be a fun way to kick off Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving morning, we headed to town earlier than the girls ever get up, but they were still pretty good troopers about getting out the door o early.

Signing up was easy, we listened to the little speeches. A high schooler from Florida organized the race to raise money for charity and just to be able to run in it — she heads to Blue Ridge for Thanksgiving at her grandparents’ house and misses running in the Turkey Trot in her own town. As a group, the trotters walked over to the starting line, drawn with chalk, and we were off. Chloe insisted on running with Rob. Camille and I waited for everyone to take off, then we started walking. The race route was a bit complicated in that in one place we had three different groups of people passing each other. We met up with Rob and Chloe around the two mile mark — Chloe was thirsty and bored (not a surprise).

Camille and I trudged on. While there had been people behind us at various points, they must have all dropped out or cut short on the turnaround, because we ended up being the absolute last ones across the finish line.

If I walk faster than 3 miles an hour, my shins start to hurt, so I knew I was going to be one of the slowest. But somehow, I hadn’t expected to be last. But, we finished with our heads held high anyway….Maybe next year we’ll try again.