When you schedule a race for late November in central Illinois you’re rolling the dice on the weather. Luckily for me, Sunday turned out to be a beautiful Sunday for the 50th annual Peoria Turkey trot! 55 degrees and full sun = shorts and a tee-shirt running weather.
Since the race started at 1pm, I was able to convince the
whole family to tag along and cheer me on.
After I got there I was also able to convince Nori to do the fun run
(Maya and Kenna were not feelin it). I
snuck in a mile warm up before the fun run began. Nori was able to come in 2nd in
the fun run (out of 2), but put on a good effort and ran most of the way on the
~1/2 mile course. Most importantly she had fun!
My race started soon after the fun run finished, so I booked
it over to the start line. I was nursing
a sore hip and knew I really shouldn’t be running but I’d been waiting for this
race since 2019 when I came in 3rd in my age group (top 2 in each
age group get a free turkey) and was itching for redemption. I had run 4 miles on Saturday and it felt
okay so I hoped my hip would hold up.
I lined up in the front and with the sound of an air horn we
were off. I tucked in behind the front
pack of over-eager racers for the first ¼ mile.
After that a lone male runner broke away and I followed suit (winding up
~20 feet behind him). At the ½ mile
point the race includes a steep climb. I
followed along in 2nd place for the next mile over a winding, slightly rolling climb, to the top of Detwieller hill.
The hill is broken up with several downhill sections. I was able to keep pace with my competition
on the first climb. I was really pushing the effort the whole climb but it was manageable. I just focused on smooth, short, steady
strides. By the 2nd steep
climb I started gaining some ground and the guy ahead of me even started
walking for a few steps. I weighed
pushing it to make up some more ground but decided to keep it steady.
At the 1.5 mile point the course flattens out a bit as the road
comes around to an intersection before hitting one last short climb before a long descent. Although my HR was in the
mid-170s for most of the climb I actually felt alright. I pushed it a bit on that final climb and
started gaining some more ground.
The next ½ mile was steep downhill and that’s when the
problems started. I could feel my hip
throbbing a bit on the climb but it was manageable. Then the downhill section totally blew my hip up. I didn’t feel there was much I could
do but just let the hill carry me down, but the pounding took its toll. I tried to run tangents and even hopped onto
the grassy shoulder for a bit to reduce the loading but nothing really
helped. By the bottom of the hill I was
in a lot of pain and when we finally reached the flats I was basically limping.
With almost 1.5 miles left, I briefly considered dropping
out but I was in 2nd place and there wasn’t another runner in sight behind me, plus I didn't want my kids to see a quitter. I
decided I’d power through and deal with the aftermath later. For the rest of the run I didn’t
really have the ability to race anymore.
The 1st place runner pulled way ahead and wound up pretty much out of sight. I just chugged along as fast
as my injury would allow and tried to keep my stride normal and avoided limping as
much as possible. It hurt on every step
but I knew I didn’t have too far to go.
The last mile is on grass along the Illinois high school state
cross country course. It’s pretty much a
flat open field so I could see behind me and no one was close. I was able to maintain about a 7:15 pace and
my HR dropped back into the 160s. I didn’t
feel like I was running that hard but my leg wouldn’t let me run any faster. I just tried to go as fast as I could
sometimes even focusing on powering off my good leg as I hobbled along.
Mercifully, I finally came to the finish and was able to
stop. I was hoping my kids would at least
been around to cheer me in but they were screwing around in the car and missed the
finish by about 5 minutes L. None the less, my daughter Maya was still
very excited and proud of her father for getting 2nd place overall
so I suppose it all worked out okay in the end, for all intents and purposes. Plus it was a good opportunity to get everyone out of the house to enjoy the nice weather.
We stuck around for the next half hour waiting for everyone to
finish and the award ceremony to start. I
wasn’t able to cool down because once I stopped running the leg completely tightened up to the point that running even another step was
out of the question. 2nd
Overall came with an oversize turkey trophy and a coupon for a free Turkey (up
to 15 lbs and/or $25). We stopped by
the grocery store on the way home and claimed said turkey. It’s sitting in fridge thawing for the
smoker.
I was happy with the result and beat my previous time by about 30 seconds. I was disappointed that I was hurt and couldn't compete for first place. I was in pretty good position with 1.5 to go and on flat terrain. I don't know if I could have won but it would have been nice to at least compete for it. Jogging in to a far off 2nd place was sort of anti-climactic. Oh well, I guess I have something to shoot for next time.
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Today, my hip is not in very good shape. I’m pretty much limping around even when walking, although once I start walking it loosens up some and the limp gets less pronounced. I was able to ride the bike for 45 minutes this morning. I wouldn’t say that biking was exactly pain free but it didn’t really seem that it was making it worse and if I got into the correct alignment it was okay. I also walked on the treadmill for 2 miles after that to get some of my steps in. This was also manageable, although occasionally I’d take a wrong step and my leg would nearly buckle.
Looks like I’m biking for a bit, which I’m mostly okay with…
I knew the risk when I raced and decided to go ahead with it anyway. I’m hoping a week off will be enough to get
me running a bit again but it’s hard to tell… right now it feels more tender
and swollen than actually damaged so I’m hoping it amounts to a bad bruise
rather than something more nefarious.
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