29th Fifth Third Turkey Trot; 24th November 2011

This was to be my final race of the year and my biggest start to date, right in the heart of downtown Detroit. Gordon was signed up for it too and it was to be his first 10k. We had accepted Roger & Sharon's offer of carpooling down there as they had been down to the event before and knew the lie of the land,etc. I got up at 4:30am, which is amazing as I set my alarm for 4:15am, but forgot to switch it on, so that was damn lucky. We got on the road by 5am, planning to meet Roger & Sharon at Sharon's house by 5:30, hoping to get downtown by 6am, I think. We got there no problem and ended up hanging out in the Compuware building at Campus Martius while waiting to start.

Myself, Gordon & Sharon, before the race

We decided with about 20 minutes to go that we should try and find our start corral, Gordon and myself were in 'Dasher', which meant we had a pace of between 8-9:30, we couldn't find out so we just found a place in the middle of the pack to try and hide from the cold wind. Once we got the obligatory national anthem out the way and they started the race, it actually took us a few minutes to cross the starting line and then we were off. I wasn't managing to track pace very well as my Garmin was having some satellite acquisition issues, so we just kept up with everyone else and got on with it. Gordon was keeping great pace so I just ran beside him or a little in front or behind.

Gordon kept going strong, I think he was enjoying being out there. I could tell after about 20 minutes that he was struggling, but didn't want to let me down, so we walked for a little bit just so he could recover. I think we had four short walks throughout the whole 10k, which is really good going as it was his first. I made him promise me one thing, that he had to beat me, which he did with pleasure I think, maybe a little too much. We wanted to come in about 1 hour, which we did. All in all it was a great run, kinda cold, but I'm glad we did it.

I was two seconds behind him, and seven people, just as an indication of how busy it was...