Donner Lake Turkey Trot

Another fun race at the Donner Lake Turkey Trot. As much of Team Library Dork as could be mustered (Amber, Dave and I ) trekked up past Truckee - a little early, as it turned out. We somehow got ourselves up there at 9:15 for a 10:30 race, which made for some standing around time, as we aren't much for warm-ups. But we made the most of it, joking around and taking pre-race photos:



Before the 7 mile main race goes, they send the kids out for the "Mashed Potato Mile." Love watching these kids sprint out of the start, then come wheezing in a few minutes later -



Dave, is that a kid in a Bulldogs sweatshirt right in the middle? Didn't hear you cheering... ;)

I'd only run this race last year, and then they'd switched the course around to run counter-clockwise because of some icy conditions. this year they ran it the regular way, which put the hilly section first, and ended with a flat 3.5 miles heading back west to the beach. I pushed a little on the hills, and felt pretty good. After looping through the park at the east end of the lake, I fell in behind a fast older guy with a dog. I tried to stick with his pace, and ended up staying with him right until the finish, with a time of 53:30 - knocking about 4 minutes off last year's time.

Oh, funny thing about this race - I forgot my Garmin at home, and did the while thing pretty blind as to pace or timing, just on feel. Kind of a fun way to run for a change, but of course I don't have any pretty graphics of the course to put up here.

The other thing I forgot was the case that I carry my phone/camera in sometimes, and so didn't have that on course with me either. I grabbed it out of the car quickly after I finished, though, and was back in time to see Amber finishing:



Glad her knee didn't bother her too much today. Dave came through for the fist bump pretty soon after:



We hung around for the raffle afterwards - lots and lots of numbers were called, but the only one of ours was Dave's. All the yummy pumpkin pies were gone, so he ended up with a t-shirt. We also imposed on some poor guy to take post-race pictures of us with all our cameras:



We then called Gretchen to meet us over at FiftyFifty Brewing on the other side of town for lunch. Might have to find a new post race spot - despite being nice people, having good food and some pretty decent beers, we've had terrible luck with the service there. Lunch today was just a waiting game, and I ended up eating late enough that I'm not gonna be hungry for dinner.

But all in all, a great day out racing. Thanks everyone!

Race results posted here.