Not Your Typical Turkey Trot

Yesterday was the first time I ever had to enter a six digit PIN at a security gate in the middle of a race. One poor chap said he entered his four times before getting through. The event was a charity fun run that started and finished on a government facility, but ventured into the surrounding neighborhood for most of the race. As a result, there were some oddities like lining up single file to pass through the sole turnstile 100 meters from the starting line. The race course also involved running up and down flights of stairs, which is a special skill in itself - I saw one runner quickly descend three or four steps at a time.

All in all, I mention the above as a convenient excuse for a disappointing performance from my last time trial in July, which I ran over a minute faster than yesterday. Also, I might have taken a wrong turn somewhere, since my GPS watch shows I ran .16 miles short of a full 5K. I'll admit, though, that I wasn't prepared for the hilly terrain and was not fully recovered from my training runs earlier in the week. Still, it was a beautiful course and it's always good fun to run with other kindred spirits in support of a good cause.

A quick summary of the past week:

November 15: 5 miles (7:41, 8:20, 6:32, 8:50, 6:45)

November 12: 4 miles on the treadmill: 1.5 mile warm up, 4 x 800 (3:00, 3:00, 3:00, 2:56), 200 meter jogs in between

November 10: 3 miles: 1 mile warm up, 2 x 6 hill sprints, 1 mile cool down