5th Annual Gobble Wobble 5K Road Race Report

I did this race last year with my mom. We did the 2-mile walk instead of the 5K. Looking at the route this year, I realized that we went the wrong way last year and ended up doing 1.77 miles instead of 2. Oh well. It was togetherness!

Thanksgiving 2010

Before the race, both years, a turkey crossed my path on the drive to the location. I don’t know about you, but these turkeys are BRAVE! I mean, showing your face on Thanksgiving when everyone wants to eat you? Tough turkeys, they are!

I met up with some friends for the race and we chatted about how freaking cold it was outside. My car thermometer told me it was 28* on the way over to the race. I had many layers on, but just standing there at the beginning was quite cold.

Luckily, registration was held inside a school that was the start/finish area of the race. So it was a short time of standing around in the cold before the race. They also supplied food & coffee. Bagels, bananas, danishes, munchkins, donuts, coffee from both Dunkins & Starbucks. And PIE. Lots of pie. I have decided that I’m no longer in the 5K business for t-shirts (though, they are pretty cool!) I’m now in it for the pie!

PIE

The race itself was pretty good. The route was hilly, but I managed quite well. I planned to run half miles at a time, and take walk breaks of .1 or .2 miles depending on how I was doing, but I really didn’t follow that. I ran as much as I could and took about 30-45 second walk breaks when I felt tired, or when the hills were too much for me. I made it about half way up the one big hill before I had to walk. But I power walked it and probably went about as fast as I was running. At one point in the beginning of the race, I was running a lot slower than I usually do because I hadn’t really warmed up and I didn’t wanna get cramped up, and people were walking faster than I was running. Most of them were only doing the 2-mile walk so I never got the chance to try and pass them again later. But there were 2 girls who were walking about as fast as I was running, and they did the entire 5K, but I never caught up to them. They were just a head of me the entire race. It was good motivation though, because I kept them in my sights the whole time and I didn’t allow myself to fall back.

A first for this race was that I was about to set someone in my sights and pass him near the end and hold him off and finish before him. He encouraged me to run pretty much the entire last mile of the race. Not with his words, but with my desire to pass someone in a race – while they were still moving and not stopping to tie a shoe (which I had to do at one point in this race).

There is a running joke among family friends that I have short legs. So I’ll use that excuse here. I can’t walk fast. I just can’t. I can run or jog as other people walk at their normal pace. But trying to keep up with someone’s normal walking pace gets me out of breath and it’s easier to break into a jog. So, when I see people passing me walking while I’m running, I curse my short legs. I’ve tried the power walk. It just doesn’t work for me.

The reason for this story? The guy I passed was walking. I saw him up ahead of me around mile 1.3 and thought, I wonder if I can catch him. As the race went on, I saw that I was getting closer and I decided that I would pass him. I finally passed him around 2.8 miles in.

I didn’t finish in record time, but I did better than I have been doing lately with this distance, so I guess that’s progress.


Official time: 51:20 - 3.11 miles

My friends were waiting for me at the finish. We went into the school to grab coffee and stock up on PIE. And I had fun with the turkey hat.

Friends of Southborough Recreation put on a really great race and I have a feeling this will become a Thanksgiving tradition for me!

I thought it was funny that they used last year's banner!