ORRC TURKEY TROT AT THE ZOO RECAP

Good video recapping the "race" ... watch for me in red at the start line video around 1:40 hopping up on the sidewalk and looking generally stiff and uninterested. (Video credit: David Green)

I was all set to do a preview of this race early last week, but I ended up getting lazy (theme of the month) and when I went to gather information to make the post I discovered the run was "untimed." Apparently a lot of these turkey trots are just untimed fun runs, which is fine, but it wasn't my goal with this race. The one I did last year was timed, so next year I'll have to pay closer attention to whether or not the race I'm signing up for actually has results.

Ready to start... the rain held off mostly.

Needless to say, I wasn't really looking forward to this race. I had to get up early and go run around on hills and all of it was just for "fun." I woke up around 7am, ate a piece of cake for breakfast, then headed to park at Sunset Transit Center and take the MAX into the Oregon Zoo. Well, I just missed a train and the next one wasn't for 25 minutes because they were on a Sunday schedule. Yikes! I went back to my car to stay warm and wandered back to the platform a few minutes before the train came.

Arriving at the zoo with only minutes before the start of the first wave, I frantically looked for packet pickup. I didn't want to get stuck in the second or third wave, which would have a lot of walkers and very few people my speed. Luckily I was able to find the packet pickup and they didn't start quite on time so I had just filtered down toward the start line when the race started at 8:04.

Generally downhill was the theme of the first mile and I ran it in 7:30. I was running fast but I wasn't killing myself. The turnaround was at mile 1.75, which seemed to come pretty quick. Given that it was mostly downhill and the turnaround was before halfway that makes sense though. The tail end of this mile included some really steep uphill. I ran this mile in 7:49... I was going about the same speed until I had to run up the hill.

During the race... pretty course!

The third mile was pretty much all uphill. The course was on a curvy, tight, two lane road through the forest near the zoo. Being mostly an out and back course, traffic was on both sides of the road but by the time we hit people coming back it was spread out enough it wasn't really an issue. The video above gives a really good feel of the course including the hills we were facing in miles 1.8-3.4 or so. All told it was about 350 feet of elevation gain in just over a mile and a half. Nothing to sneeze at.

That super hilly third mile was ran in 8:19. That goes to show I wasn't slacking off too much. I would say I was going about 90% of my normal race effort. I wanted to stop and walk on those hills but I didn't and I still turned in a pretty good mile time. The fourth and final mile included some uphill at the beginning but it wasn't too steep and we got to finish downhill into the zoo for the final half mile.

My last mile clocked in at 7:01. By this mile I was warmed up and going nearly race speed. The downhill finish made it easy to really gun it and give it my all. Thus a pretty good mile time for a mile that included some uphill. I clocked my time at about 30:45... it was unclear exactly where the finish line was so I let my watch run a little long. That is 7:42/mile, a pretty solid effort for an event I could have cared less about.

Anyways, it ended up being a good way to start the day, had a great Thanksgiving with my family later and got to see my aunt and Grandma.