Turkey Beach Park Trot 6 miler 5K

Ah yes, the turkey day run. As I did last year, I woke up early on Turkey Thrusday and headed to San Francisco for a pre feast run. This year was a bit different however. Because of the oil spill in the San Francisco Bay, the usual venue of Ocean Beach was closed, and thus the race was moved to Golden Gate Park. Additionally, because of the short notice, permitting the race was a challenge, and they were not able to obtain permits to close roads, so the distance was shortened from the usual 6 miles to a 5 K race. It was still a great time.

I headed out the door around 7AM for Golden Gate Park, and found fantastic parking near the check-in. It was chilly, so after getting my bib and t-shirt, snapping a photo of the turkey for my son and daughter (scheduled to run the kids race, but still at home sleeping in this year) I headed back to the car with my complimentary Starbucks brew to stay warm. Around 8, I headed back to the polo fields where the race would start. I enjoyed the sunny morning as I stretched out and watched the few hundred kids run 100M to claim their candy! It was fun, but wasn’t the same without my two superstars in the race.

After this I made my way up to the starting line, on the track circling the polo fields. We were off without much fanfare, and it was a glorious morning… It was still pretty packed, so I just kept pace with everyone around me, slow at first, and then picking up to a comfortable pace. I decided to stick with this pace, around 8:30 mile/minutes. Around the track, then out around the park, and back to the track on some singe-track dirt path, with a few hills thrown in the middle… It was a nice run, and I was pretty happy with the pace I was running… Certainly one of my better 5K’s but not breaking any land-speed records. I finished without the ususal break-neck sprint at the end - for some reason I didn’t feel it necessary to jump a few spots in the finishers list at the expense of someone else’s feelings of getting passed at the end - it was a day to be thankful after all, and that is what I was - thankful for a beautiful Thursday morning run with a thousand others who enjoyed the run, and were about to enjoy some TURKEY!

Final time was 26:55 about a 8:40 pace.

Incidentally, my training called for 6 miles this day, so when I returned home I went for another 3 miles with my daughter in the running stroller - the combination of these 2 runs kept my blood sugars in check all day despite all the food.

Gobble, gobble,

Jamie, The Diabetic Runner

P.S. It turns out it’s not the battery causing issues with uploading my BG readings… it was a bad USB cable that connects the meter - I have a new one on order and will upload when I receive it.