The "10K-Plus"

What's a Tofurkey Day race without a little -- or a lot -- of snow?

I ran a 10km race on Thanksgiving morning. Actually it was billed as a 10km, and then sometime after registration but before packet pickup, changed to a "10K-plus."

Ten kilometers is approximately equivalent to 6.2 U.S. miles. This one would be closer to 6.5 miles we were told, due to a change in the location of the start line.

Great. I'd been running six miles in my training runs, knowing that if I could get through six miles, the final point-two would be an adrenaline-filled surge to the finish line. Now that was going to turn into two full laps of an outdoor track. For athletes other than Olympic marathoners, that is a long way to kick.

I sucked it up and set off with 450 other runners in a blinding snowstorm and temperatures in the teens. At least the wind wasn't blowing -- the weather forecast had predicted near zero wind chills. In comparison, 17 degrees felt absolutely balmy. My ski gloves came off at mile number one. And the sun came out at mile number two. Bonus!

They sent us down a road between two hunting grounds. "Bang." Bang." Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang." I was glad I wasn't one of the people running with a turkey on my head, but slightly bothered that we hadn't been warned to wear blaze orange.

To add to the fun, the road was unplowed, and being at the end of the pack meant I was running on packed powder, which is a ski area euphemism for ice. At my age, one slip -- even if you don't go down -- can mean a year-long recovery from injury.

I survived and I crossed the finish line. That last half mile was a long half mile. It actually turned out to be point-six miles.

My time was far from spectacular -- a 13:02 minute per mile pace, two minutes per mile slower than my October 5km race -- but faster than my shorter training runs.

I always have three goals for a race, and for this one they were:

a) finish
b) not be the runner being tailed by the police car/volunteer pick up van (that is to say, not be last -- but being last would have been okay as long as I met the first goal)
c) Break 14:00 per mile. Who am I kidding? I really wanted to break 13:30 per mile, but thought that was out of the realm of possibility.

I accomplished all three. But, there was a time -- eight long years -- when my feet were so broken down that I wondered if I would ever run a 5km race again.

On this Thanksgiving day, I had managed to run more than twice that far. The rest of the day was gravy.