Turkey Trotting

Thanksgiving morning I had signed Randy, Kyle, Amy and myself up to do the 34th Annual "Turkey Trot" in Walnut Creek. Having a planned event to train for is motivational- even though this is a far cry from the 1/2 marathon distance I am ultimately aiming for. Regardless I thought it would be fun to do and collecting another race tee shirt is always fun. The plan was to get up and out of here by about 7:20, pick up Amy and get to Walnut Creek well ahead of the 8:15 start time. Randy woke up, as usual, long before the alarm clock and was off to get his daily Starbucks fix. When the alarm went off I jumped up, dressed and then went to wake Kyle. Randy still wasn't home from Starbucks which is only about 2 1/2 miles away from the house. The time was drawing nearer that we were supposed to already to at Amy's to pick her up . . . still no Randy. Within a few minutes he came through the door and quickly dressed for the race. As we were leaving to go to Amy's he tried to explain why he was late. It seems a pack (herd, gaggle?) of turkey's was on Stone Valley Road. They are not daunted by traffic and were remaining in the road. One turkey actually had the audacity to engage Randy in a game of Chicken- the turkey flew out of the way as Randy got close enough to hit him. Randy's story was funny but Kyle wasn't particularly amused as his girlfriend was the person made waiting by our lateness. As we traveled down Stone Valley towards Amy's that same gang (or club) of turkeys was still impeding traffic. Now even Kyle had to smile- my goodness this is a stupid bird. And by the way, they don't trot, they slowly saunter out of the traffic lanes, but do so in a single file procession. . . maddening.

We made it to the race in plenty of time and all beat our previous 5K times. I finally conquered the 30 minute race time coming in below. Turkey's aside, it was a fantastic morning. I felt even less pity for the bird on our table that evening . . .