Gobble Gallop Race Report, plus some random musings

Gobble Gallop Race Report

This may be one of my favorite race shirts!  Isn't it cute?  And it's a tech fabric too, so very comfy.  The race was on Thanksgiving, and was very cold.  Windy too.  My car thermometer said 19 while I was on my way there, it was probably in the low 20's by the time the race started.

The Hendricks Regional Health YMCA in Avon sponsors this race, and it mostly takes place on the fitness trails at the Y, with a little bit being on the roads in the neighborhood just by the Y.  It's a completely flat course, and a very nice place to run.  The big Thanksgiving race in the Indy area is the Drumstick Dash in Broad Ripple, with thousands of people participating.  This one was still pretty big also, though.  The official results page says 526 people finished the race, and that doesn't count kids in strollers.

 Interesting side note: According to Runner's World, Thanksgiving is the most popular day for road racing in the U.S.

The crowd size definitely slowed me down at the beginning.  There were signs at the start line directing people to line up by pace, and I was by the 12 minute mile sign.  But lots of people either didn't see or ignored the signs, because there were lots of slower runners and walkers ahead of me that held me up for a while since the fitness trails are very narrow.  Once we got spread out, though, I had a really good run:

bib number:	2331
age:	45
gender:	F
location:	Brownsburg, IN
overall place:	280 out of 526
division place:	34 out of 74
gender place:	137 out of 299
time:	35:51
pace:	11:34
gun time:	36:47

Not a PR for me, but less than a minute from my 5K PR, still pretty consistent with what I've been running lately, so I'm happy with that finish.  I added some Christmas songs to my running playlist too, so that was fun. 

Random Musings

I had been thinking about doing the Santa Hustle Half Marathon on December 15th.  I enjoyed training for and completing my first half marathon back in September and want to do another one.  In the last few weeks, though, my left hip really hurts after any run of over 3-4 miles.  It doesn't hurt while I'm running, but once I have stopped and am walking while cooling down and for the rest of the day.  I don't know if it's the running or just the cold.  So I have decided to skip the Santa Hustle Half and limit my runs to 3-4 miles until the weather warms up again in the Spring.  Then I will gradually try increasing my miles and see how I feel.  There are several December 5Ks and at least one 10K that I know of, so I might sign up and do one of those.

I also thought about doing the Runner's World Holiday Running Streak, a pledge to run at least 1 mile a day every day from Thanksgiving through New Year's Day.  My first thought, however, upon reading that was "That's a lot of laundry."  I decided to just stick to my 3 days a week running schedule.  I don't think it would be realistic for me to try to run every day, especially since I don't own a treadmill.  And setting unrealistic goals is a good way to ensure that I will get discouraged and not do anything at all.