Happy Thanksgiving! (For Yesterday)

Thanksgiving morning I ventured out for a 4.5 mile race/fun run with a buddy of mine before scooting up to the dinner table for an awesome turkey dinner prepared by my girlfriend and her sister. BTW, these women can cook and this fact is NOT helping my efforts. Luckily my GF is very supportive of my running habit!

The annual Drumstick Dash takes place in Broad Ripple, Indiana and is a great event that benefits The Wheeler Mission Ministries. Every year, Wheeler provides more than 226,000 nutritious meals to hungry men, women and children.

A little History about “Chasing the Drumstick”:

1,300 people signed up the first year
2,000 the second year…
2,500 the third year …
3,700 the fourth year…
5,010 for the fifth year …
7,022 for the sixth year…
9,250 for the seventh year…

This year…drum role…11,300 pre-registered and believe me they all were there!

Pre-race meal: Cereal, juice and a Gu Pack (why not)

Weather: Rain, rain, rain, a bit of wind, 48 degrees and more rain…like “flood warning” rain…I saw a guy in an arc.

My thoughts: I hope my knee is up for this run since this is the first stress I’ve put on it since the 20+ miler!

As I said before, I ran with a buddy of mine who has also made great strides across the last year to drop weight (60+ lbs) and take up running. We were rockin & rollin on the first two miles at an 8:50 pace!  We registered at a 09:45/mile pace so this was awesome! We should have been one more corral up for the start! We know for next year!

Except for the rain it was a perfect day for running an event like this. We both were soaked thru to the bone by the end of it. My knee felt good and only let me know it was there a few hours afterwards with very mild stiffness which eventually went away…possibly due to the nice chianti we had with Thanksgiving dinner, but it didn’t return.

The official results were as follows!

1. Time: 00:41:43.2
2. Pace: 09:16

I know that running with my friend really helped me to not only push myself past the 9min/mile pace for the beginning of the race, but to maintain a good split for the second half. Running with a partner for a race can really help as I led him sometimes and he set pace for me at times too. We may be tackling a half-marathon in May together too!

I couldn’t be happier with the results and I’m looking forward to my final event of the year, The Indianapolis Jingle Bell Run on December 11th, 2010 which supports the Arthritis Foundation.

Happy Holidays and Happy Training!