Day 3,504—Happy Bird Day! This is my Favorite Holiday—

    When I began doing this race, my older brother had to talk me into it, and the idea of doing both races, the 3 and 6, immediately seemed insane to me. What!? I don’t remember most of those early races, but I remember running the 3-mile in under 20 minutes once. My watch told me today was my fastest 3-mile run at the Turkey Trot was 19:58 but I know when I crossed it was more like 20:05.

    I was standing waiting for the race to start with 6 minutes to go, and other runners were starting to stand closer to me. I was trying to stuff my hat and gloves in my pockets, thinking I should have left my leggings at home.

    I wanted to push myself, but not so hard that I would dry-heave and need a while to recover, so I wanted to go as far as I could while still having control.

    The first-mile zooms by. Some runners were passing me; others stayed steady. I was around 6:30, so I figured, why not keep going with the same effort? So I slipped to 6:50 and then 6:58.

    I was a little disappointed after the 3 miles. A few other runners had passed me in the last push, and I was going steady, but I didn’t have much of a kick. I parked about a mile from the start of the race. One year, I got stuck in traffic, and I have been forever scarred, so I like to be somewhat far from the start.

    The 6-mile race started with less of a push forward. I was swerving and wasting energy, passing some other runners at the start. I finished the first at 6:55, and my goal was to keep it under 7. The next few miles I was able to keep rolling the hills and stay at pace, but by mile 5 I slipped to 7:08, and that was after I thought I was flying down this hill.

    There was not much left but I felt like I was slipping and was going to finish this last mile around 8. I kept pushing, but other runners started to pass me, and then I got stuck for a moment. In the last tenth of a mile, another runner was cheering me on as he approached me, but for some reason, I swerved trying to cut him off?! I realized what I was doing and swerved back. I don’t know what got into me. To his credit, he was just nice and didn’t pass. What a nice guy. He gave me a fist bump at the end.

I felt like such an idiot for swerving and for not being able to kick at the end like I wanted, but the race was over, and I had fun.