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What: SMT Turkey Trot 5k

Where: New Cumberland Park, New Cumberland PA

When: November 22nd 2007 (Thanksgiving)

Executive Summary: finished in 19:5X, relatively flat but potentially slightly short course, race management was mediocre, post-race grub was great.

UPDATE: Official results have been posted. My clock time was 19:55 and I finished 30th out of 578 people.

Full Report: When I decided to run in the SMT Turkey Trot, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but I was picturing a relatively small race (maybe 50-100 people). As I was pulling into New Cumberlad Park about 30 minutes before the race was to start I realized I was very wrong. There were runners everywhere. A lot of people were jogging around warming up or waiting in line for the porta-potties and a constant stream of people were heading toward the registration site. I stood in line to register with a filled out form and my $20 entry fee. The registration process was being handled very efficiently. Volunteers had entry forms on clipboards and were handing them out to people in line who didn’t have a registration form with them. There were about 10 people in front of me when I got in line to register and it only took about 2-3 minutes to go through the line and finish the process.

I jogged around a bit and said hi to some of the Harrisburg Road Runners I recognized in the mass of people. A few minutes before the race started, I saw Nate Powell coming toward the starting line and we hung out until the race kicked off. There were a few announcements over a PA system before the race started, but it was hard to hear the announcer. I could only make out about half of what he was saying. It seemed like there was about 2 minutes worth of announcements and I could feel people on the starting line getting a bit edgy. All of a sudden a horn went off and the race was on.

The start was a bit more chaotic than usual. I suspect there were a higher percentage of people who didn’t race much as I could see a lot of people who had started out pretty quickly begin to struggle after the first 1/2 mile or so. The course had a few very moderate incline/decline sections, but overall is was pretty flat. I didn’t encounter anything I would classify as a hill, although there were a few small bumps. Traffic was being stopped by police or volunteers at a number of intersections, but there were also some places where there was no traffic control. I didn’t encounter any problems, but there were a few areas where if my timing was 10 seconds slower it could have been awkward figuring out if a car was going to wait for me or I should alter my path.

I felt fairly solid for the 1st mile (6:27), the 2nd mile I was starting to fade a bit and was wondering why I thought it was a good idea to race a 5k less than two weeks after a marathon. I was contemplated backing way off the pace and taking it in easy when I heard the two mile split being announced (13:00 according to the announcer, but in retrospect I think the 2nd mile marker may have been a tiny bit short). At that point I figured I might as well try to finish it up strong since there wasn’t a lot of distance left. At about 2 and a half miles I saw a teenager to the side wearing a full bodied turkey costume with a bunch of feathers in his hand. I heard a runner that was just behind me yell out to the turkey kid “I’ll take a feather!”. I then remembered hearing some garbled words from the announcer about door prizes and feathers, but by the time I had sorted that out in my head I was about ten seconds past the turkey kid and decided it wasn’t worth the time penalty to turn back and grab a feather.

My stomach was really hurting for the last half a mile or so, but you could see the finish from 400 or 500 meters away and having the end in sight makes it a lot easier to deal with the pain. I’m not sure of my exact time, I think the official clock was reading in the low 19:50s. My watch time was 19:49, but I waited until I crossed the starting line before beginning the timer, so I was probably a few seconds short of the official time. Garmin had clocked my 3rd mile at 6:15, and a additional .08 miles in 25 seconds. I suspect the race might be a tiny bit short, but there were some sharp corners during the race where the Garmin might have lost a few feet due to sampling gaps. Either way, my pace was right around a 20:00 5k and I’m fine with that.

After walking down the long chute (a good idea for the large number of entrants in the race, apparently there were some problems last year with people cramming up in the chute) I handed the tear off section of the bib to a volunteer and wandered over to the food area. This race had an awesome spread of food. There were bagels, pastries, pie slices (blueberry and pumpkin), cookies, coffee, hot chocolate, water, soup, breads.

I met Nate after he finished (his hip had been hurting him so he ran a very conservative race) and we hung around a bit eating some of the goodies and trying to figure out where we could see the results. Unfortunately, even with waiting around for about 20 minutes we couldn’t find the typical results board that you see at most races, or even a person we could ask about the official places/times. I hope the results get posted to the web site soon.

Race kudos: The race-day registration process was handled very well and all the food laid out was fantastic.

Race improvements: It would be nice if the results could be posted on a viewable board or printed out soon after people finished.

Motion Based

This entry was posted on Friday, November 23rd, 2007 at 7:51 pm and is filed under running. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.