Friday, November 20, 2009

Turkey Trot Preview

Before I head to Las Vegas for the half marathon, I have one other little race to take care of. When we used to live close to family, I would cook Thanksgiving dinner on occasion. Although I am not much of a cook, I can actually put together a nice holiday meal by relying on favorite recipes. Now that we are always traveling for Thanksgiving, we are the lucky guests at another's table. Since I don't have the pressure of getting the turkey in the oven, a Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving is a must.

I was just on Athlinks.com checking out my previous Turkey Trot 5K times. Have you been over to Athlinks? I love it because it keeps track of all of your races, times and paces. You can look up other runners, too, but of course I would never do that because we should all just be worried about ourselves and who cares about what anyone else is doing. Ya, right. Anyway, I was noticing that my PR pace for a 5K is 8:08 per mile from back in 2007. Last Thanksgiving my pace was 8:10, but when I ran a 5K this spring my pace was 9:16. It appears that I have slowed considerably.

While its too late to set a goal for the 5K that I could actually do any training towards, I think I will set a goal just for motivational purposes. More accurately, it would be a guess as to what my time is going to be. I've been feeling slow lately, so it's hard for me to guess how fast I could actually go if I were willing to suffer for a whole 3.1 miles. Do I want to suffer? The half marathon is the next week, so maybe I shouldn't suffer too much.

I don't know what time to pick. Does anyone want to help? Maybe you should give me my goal pace for the 5K? Here are the facts: my pace at my last 5K in the spring was 9:16. I also ran an 8K in the spring and my pace was 8:52. The Thanksgiving race this year is held on a reasonably flat course. This is a charity race, so it's questionable if the course will really be 3.1 miles. I'm going to go by the time and distance as recorded by my Garmin. Leave me a comment with your predicted pace. I wish I could give the winner a prize, but seeing as you all don't live next door, if you are the closest I will link to your profile/blog in my next post and hail your prediction skills. I promise to run my fastest!

9 comments:

Mel-2nd Chances said...

Good luck in the race, I predict 27:10. Go Beth Go!

Tim F said...

Good luck! I predict 26.52 (an 8:40 pace)

Mark said...

Beth, you are fast!! You will run a 27:24! Good luck, friend!

AZ said...

I'm thinking an 8:30 pace for about 26:22. Good luck. What race are you doing?

Dori said...

Since you've been training for a half marathon, I'm sure you'll be faster than your 9:16 pace. Pluse last spring you were recovering from winter. Don't worry about your 5K time, your half is more importan--it will show up on Athlinks! ;-)

Hope you get in to NY. Happy T-day!

Love to Run said...

Hi Beth,

Good Luck in the Turkey Trot 5K. They have a Turkey Trot around here (just like everywhere I would guess) that is actually a prediction run race. You are not allowed to wear a watch and the winners are the ones who most closely predict their own times.

As for your race. No idea, but if I must, I say an ever 26:00. Have Fun!

Thomas Bussiere said...

25:30 - Your faster then you give yourself credit. Don't worry about the clock and let yourself fly.

BrianFlash said...

25:40

Burn off those Thanksgiving calories before you even eat them!

Velma said...

I was going to guess 26 flat, but I will go with 25:50. Are you coming to the StL to run? I am running in Chesterfield. Should be a nice day to run. Good luck!