A while back I talked a little about our little training group coming up with a name for ourselves, just one of many ways we pass the time on some of our longer runs. Well, we kind of stopped talking about it and then Kim came up with these....Enter Sunny Doom!
Just a fun little name for a group of people that like to swim/bike/run together. We decided that the Turkey Trot would be a great place to unveil our super cool race singlets (they had our names on the back as well).
So, the Turkey Trot is a 10 mile road race in which you are not allowed to use a watch, music or anything else that might help you pass the time. You can choose to do this race for fun, by yourself for a nice little pre-stuff-your-face Thanksgiving dinner or you can enter as a team. (We chose to do it as a team) Here's the catch, you have to predict your time and that's how the winners are decided, so it's no longer about how fast you go, it's now about how good you are at controlling and staying on your own pace, which I'm not so good at. The thought of not having a watch and being able to constantly be able to check and make sure I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing is a bit anxiety provoking for me (so it's probably a good thing I did this race).
So, in order to make sure there's no funny business, everyone is given a popsicle stick prior to the race starting and you have to write down your name and your predicted finish time. A little birdie told us that the course was a tad short of 10 miles so we/I sort of took this into consideration when guessing my time. Somehow I came up with 1:15.46. Craig had told me to shoot for 1:12, but I knew I wasn't going to be able to go that fast on this particular morning so I added three minutes, now the 46 came from no where, 46 doesn't mean anything to me, I just picked a random number. So we start the run and Aaron and I end up running together, chatting and just going through the motions, it's the same course/loop that basically every running race in the state is completed on, so it's pretty boring. We're running along at what I feel is a pretty good pace and we keep chatting with people we pass/people that pass us and ask everyone what times they have written down on their sticks, and by their answers we deduce that we have to be pretty on target for the times we had written down on our own sticks. Finally, we are about a 1/2 mile from the finish and since it's close to the finish, people start zooming past us, well, we decided to stay the course since we felt like we were pretty close to our targeted time and guess what, we were! We crossed the finish line in 1:15:46...exactly the time I had predicted (there ended up being 5 people that guessed their times exactly, pretty impressive if you ask me and I'd bet that I won't ever be guessing my time to the second ever again)! I'm not exactly sure how that happened, but it was a great start to Thanksgiving.
Here's a couple of pictures from the morning...
On to the Turkey Swim.
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| Dave and I post-race |
Well it was pretty chilly Saturday morning, a fleece jacket and sweats kind of morning: I know, I know, I used to live on the east coast and there's no way that I should think being able to go for an ocean swim at the end of November in Hawaii is chilly, but trust me, live here for long enough, your blood thins and everything below 75 feels cold! Seeing as how cold I was before the race, I decided to skip the warm up, bad or good idea, I'm not so sure yet. The course was just a quick little out and back at Magic Island/Ala Moana Beach. A straight shot, no waves, no worries about sharks or any other ocean critters coming to get you because this beach is pretty protected (at least I choose to believe it is and if you know otherwise, please do not tell me). My plan was to hook on back of the lead group and just cruise the swim for the rest of the time. Well that didn't work, I'm just not in the swimming state of mind right now, I stuck with them until almost the turn around and then they took off. I totally could have kept up by hanging onto someone's feet, but right now I just don't like being uncomfortable swimming. I was happy to drop back and swim 3/4 of the race by myself. I finished in 30:21 (ended up 1st in my AG), about 2 minutes slower than my Honu time (and even this wasn't a dead out sprint because I had a bike and a run to follow the swim) For only swimming 1x week (about 2-3000 yards a pop, that's not too shabby). One of my smaller goals/things I'm going to be working on after marathon season is to be comfortable being uncomfortable while swimming. How I was able to do that for so long in college, high-school and age-group swimming, I'm not so sure right now, but I will get back to that point before CdA.
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| Dave ended up 2nd in his AG at the race! |
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