Conquering the Turkey

For the past several years, my husband and I have made it an annual Thanksgiving season tradition to compete in our town's yearly Turkey Trot.  My husband was born to sprint and usually nabs himself a Turkey  Trophy for placing in his age group each year.  Since I am built more for endurance than for speed (or so I like to tell myself as we're running fartleks in our neighborhood together), I've aspired to simply beat our town's turkey in this lively and fun 5K. 

Allow me to explain- each year, some unnamed soul bravely dons a full-on turkey costume and runs the race along with all us weekend warriors.  And he usually does pretty darned well, most would say spectacular even, given the nature of his costume.  He must be sweating up a proverbial storm in the get-up and I can't imagine it's very easy to see through the turkey mask. The turkey would also smack talk via email- that picture you see in the sidebar is one sent in an email in which he proclaimed, "think you can beat me? Think again!"   He could back up such smack talk with actual statistics.   In 2009, he finished the 5K in an impressive 24 minutes.  This year, in our second Turkey Trot update (the race director sends out funny updates leading up to the big day), it was estimated that he would finish this year's in 28:30.  Which gave me a small glimmer of hope...

My personal best in a 5K had stood at 29:08.  Despite my best efforts and consistent training schedules leading up to each 5K I've done, I hadn't been able to break the 29 minute mark.  And, although I was all wishful thinking and displaying yes, perhaps a touch of bravado after enduring nearly two months of Shaun T's torture in Insanity,  the fact that I had been only able to tackle two or three runs over the past two months certainly deflated the heights of my hope.  To beat the turkey, I'd have to literally beat myself- and do it with a bare minimum of runs under my belt.  And, did I mention I've been battling a cold over the past week? Things were not looking good.

And the good went from not so good to worse when my poor hubby came down with my cold and was most certainly not up for running his full out speed demon self on race morning.  Should I just wave the little white flag that I had conveniently placed in my pocket the night before when thinking of the turkey's projected finish time?  My hubby, my greatest cheerleader, would not be paving the path before me on race day.  Much to my surprise, I ignored that little white flag, that nagging "you can't do it so why bother trying?," that shameful part of my self that was all too eager to give up at the first sign that something was going to be difficult.  I strapped on my sneakers, my now nearly loose spandex running capris, pinned my race bib to a purple running tank and threw on a black running jacket as my husband finished showering.  He came out from the bathroom, looked me up and down, grinned and said, "you're racing?"  Heck yea I'm racing!

And off we went with Stella and my trusty IPod cued up to my "sweat mix" in tow.  As we drove, hubby encouraged me and gave me some pointers on which areas of the course I should strive to kick it into high gear.  I waited and warmed up at the starting line to the tune of Tori Amos' "Take to the Sky." Before I knew it, the horn had sounded and we were off.  I lost sight of my archenemy, the Turkey, very quickly after the starting horn but caught him out of the corner of my eye about a quarter of a mile into the race.  He had stopped to root runners on!  Ah-ha, I thought, victory is mine. 

I had a great cadence going as I made my way through the course's various hills and valleys.  I was beginning to relax my pace and get into a steady groove around the halfway point when that evil Turkey came up from my right side and passed me.  Now, normally in every 5K I race, I tend to lose a bit of  steam at that halfway point.  I start focusing far too much on how much lies ahead of me, rather than how far I have already come- the strain of this takes its toll and I ease up and come to a complete stop or I start walking for a few minutes. That negative voice comes on full-force and urges me to take it easy, catch my breath, relax.  That voice was chiming along in my head several minutes before I caught sight of the Turkey again and I was just about to succumb to its demands...

Seeing the turkey, another voice suddenly came to life. It told me to keep going, to push it, to pass that Turkey and to keep going without taking even a nanosecond to look back.  It spoke louder and more forcefully than that other voice, that negative voice,  had ever spoken to me.  And I listened.  I picked up the pace, sidled alongside the Turkey (stifling the urge to do some smack talking of my own for fear of the Turkey running even faster) and passed that bird.  I kept running and pushing- pushing up the various hills on the second half of the course and up to that finish line without once looking back.  To the tune of Pink Floyd's "Run Like Hell," I spotted my husband and my beautiful daughter on the sidelines cheering me on towards that finish.  I glanced at the race clock and saw 28:48 flash before me just before my feet slammed down on the finish line.   And in that moment, I knew I had beat two of my greatest adversaries in this annual race- that costumed Turkey and myself.

The sweet taste of victory soured a bit when the race organizer's posted preliminary race results and I discovered that had I ran a mere six seconds faster I would have nabbed one of the coveted Turkey Trophies for getting third place in my age group.   I could have kept the Hamm tradition of earning race hardware alive this year!   After sharing my disappointment over this fact with my husband, he wrapped his arm around me and said, "just use it as incentive for next year!"   And that I will - I mean, imagine how much my time can improve when I put training runs into the mix again? 

What's my point in sharing all of this with you?  The point is that I want you to identify your own personal "turkey," whether it be an actual costumed bird running against you in a race or simply the voice in  your head that tells you "no," "don't" or "can't" when it comes to testing your body's capabilities, and BEAT it.  Push past it, drown it out with that other positive, confident and loving voice and don't look back.  For when you do that, you'll likely wind up amazing yourself.  With either your own personal best in a race or a newfound physical ability (such as being able to hold plank for more than 15 seconds or discovering that you can in fact do a full-on push-up rather than one on your knees). 

Wishing all of you many more victories against your own personal turkeys,
Coach Petrina