Turkey Day 5k - November 26, 2015

My final race for 2015 is the Lifetime Fitness Turkey Day 5k in downtown Minneapolis.  I ran this race back in 2009 when it was an "open" race with no individual timing.  However they finally integrated chip timing for the runners, so I gladly chose this race again for weather related reasons.  The race begins near Target Center where Lifetime operates a club.  So they utilize the Target Center lobby as their race headquarters.  Nice to have the comfort of being indoors prior to the start of the race, as weather can be rough this time of year.  Last year I ran a Thanksgiving Day race in downtown St Paul with no weather protection other than my car in a parking lot.  It was zero degrees last Thanksgiving, so no more of that kind of nonsense.

Today's race was a bit warmer.  34 degrees with an 11mph wind from the north.  Snow was just moving into the area and it began to snow just minutes before the start.  The race doesn't offer a bag drop, so you have to wear what you run in.  Maybe it was the holiday, but I wasn't overly motivated for the race today.  With the cold, wet, windy weather, I decided to stay warm right up to the race and forgo any kind of pre-race warm-up.  Just start cold turkey (no pun intended).  Of course I was also resigning myself to the fact that I wouldn't be running a competitive 5k time, but I would get a nice uptempo workout in and earn my Thanksgiving dinner.

My time was 20:47, good for 88th place among 2,664 finishers and 2nd in my 10 year age group of 138 runners.  My 4th slowest 5k among 15, so nothing to write home about.  I captured the pictures below from the race results website just after crossing the finish line.  December will be an easy run month while I also begin to lay out my race schedule for next year.

Race Results:
https://results.chronotrack.com/event/results/event/event-11533?_ga=1.128739215.266703160.1448485468