Eight crazy things that happened at my Turkey Trot

In honor of this year’s rare convergence of Thanksgiving and the first day of Hanukkah—which, as every child raised in the Mountain West learned courtesy of Adam Sandler’s “Hanukkah Song,” lasts eight crazy nights—I have structured this Thanksgiving blog post around this sacred Jewish number. Think of it as a literary menorah. L’chaim!

1.) I won a pie. And in the process, I became enlightened to the immense motivational power of this hallowed circular pastry. Titles, medals, trophies, scholarship dollars—none of these even remotely compare to pie’s exceptional energizing quality. Every time I caught a glimpse of someone in front of me who could potentially stand in the way of me and my soft, buttery, flaky specimen of baked excellence, this was my thought process: She looks like she could be in my age group. Okay, her calves have wrinkles and she clearly reads every issue of AARP The Magazine cover-to-cover, but there is freaking pie on the line, and I’m not taking any chances. What if she’s like the female Benjamin Button? Beatrice Button, prepare to eat my dust. Then, a few minutes later: Hmmm...that’s either a 12-year-old boy with exquisite bone structure or Keira Knightley’s American doppelganger. Either way, I will not gamble with androgyny. Time to surge.

So worth it. 

2.) I embarrassed myself while receiving said pie. Usually, when the time comes for me to accept an award, I am able to reign in my excitement enough to create a façade of maturity and sportsmanship. But when the award is pie, I completely lose my shit. (Which, I’m told, makes other race participants uncomfortable. Whatever.)

Actual video footage of me when they announced that I had won a pie. (Source: i.minus.com)

3.) A dude in rubber foot-gloves beat me. Perhaps my only regret of the entire day was failing to out-sprint the foot-shaped-flipper-wearing asshole I spotted in front of me near the end of the race. But alas, with my pie secured, I simply did not give enough of a hoot to rally my fast-twitch muscles (or what’s left of them) for a kick-driven statement against minimalism.

4.) I was nearly outrun by a “13-year-old” girl. (The quotation marks indicate my doubt of said girl’s given age.) Why the suspicion? For one, I refuse to believe that my athletic prowess is comparable to that of a middle schooler—a high-schooler, sure, but definitely not someone who just got the official go-ahead from the Motion Picture Association of America to watch Dumb and Dumber.

The wrong kind of turkey trots. (Source: photobucket.com) 

But more than that, a recent workplace step-counting contest tainted my trust in the competitive integrity of my fellow humans. Just as one can attach a pedometer to a Fido’s collar for a few hours to pad one’s weekly step totals, one can enter oneself in a less competitive age division in order to increase one’s chances of securing a pie. (Believe me, my running partner and I spent considerable time contemplating whether we could pass for a couple of 45-year-olds.)

5.) I ran a 5K “PR.” (The quotation marks indicate my doubt of the race course’s advertised distance.) As much as I would like to believe that I ran a community Turkey Trot faster than any of my collegiate 5Ks, I am a realist. Pie may be an incredible motivator (see item 1), but it’s not powerful enough to revert my body back to a level of fitness I will never again achieve.

6.) During the race, I burned a number of calories that represented a mere fraction of what I would later consume, but I nevertheless justified my consumption of said calories with the completion of said race. Like a dieter who hits up Dairy Queen for a “reward” after 25 minutes on the elliptical—I broke a sweat, which means I had to have burned at least, like 5,000 calories, right? One large Snickers Blizzard with extra chocolate, please!—I reasoned that my 5K effort would cancel out all the gluttonous activity on the docket for the rest of the day.

Source: quickmeme.com 

7.) I solved all my problems—save for the one above—courtesy of the problem-solving station. Yes, this is actually a thing, which begs the question: Where was it during that whole congressional standoff fiasco?

We got 99 problems, but lack of pie ain't one. 

8.) I inadvertently shed my amateur status by offering my official endorsement of a commercial product. After the race, an Aquaphor rep offered my friends and me some free product samples on one condition: she had to take a photo of us holding them. So yeah, now that my celebrity is being used to market healing ointment, I am, by definition, a professional athlete. Eat your heart out, Mary Cain.

A perfect 5 (kilometers, that is)

If you’re having a bad day, you should probably stop reading now, because what I am about to say is going to make you insanely jealous of my life.

This past Saturday, I experienced a perfect race.

I used to think of a perfect race the way I might think of a mythological creature—something that simply does not exist outside of fairy tales and Nicki Minaj’s sexual fantasies. In my mind, a perfect race was like a unicorn, or a good Nickelback song, or a bag of microwave popcorn with no burnt pieces—it just wasn't possible.

Granted, “perfect” is a pretty subjective quality. One man’s perfect is another man’s 1994 Toyota Tercel. So, to clear up any confusion about my definition of “perfect,” below I have listed my Personal Parameters of Perfection (oh yeah, that just rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?). Obviously, these parameters are tailored toward racing scenarios. I think we could all agree that a general, all-encompassing Parameters of Perfection would include only one parameter: Brad Pitt.

My Personal Parameters of Perfection for Racing Scenarios

1. Temperature between 60 and 68 degrees Fahrenheit.

2. Wind so light it feels like a flock of sparkly fairies continually fanning your face with tiny palm leaves.

3. Flat, smooth course with very few turns.

4. Geographic location at or near sea level.

5. Field that is large enough to warrant chip timing but small enough that it is feasible to make multiple pre-race bathroom visits.

The Litchfield Park Friends of the Rec 5K satisfied all of these criteria. Plus, there was bouncy house at the finish! The only negative aspect of the entire affair was that I had to start behind a shirtless man with so much back hair that I can say, with 95 percent confidence, that he was related to either Sasquatch or the Kardashian family. Unfortunately, I was unable to snag a photo of him, but this detailed illustration should give you a pretty good idea of what I was dealing with:

To top it all off, I felt incredible! Seriously, if you train in a cold, miserable, high-altitude location, I highly recommend racing exclusively in Phoenix, Arizona.

Unencumbered by bulky layers of fleece and spandex, I felt light and free. In fact, I found myself intermittently looking down to make sure I was actually wearing clothes. (Although I would hope that my friend Kim—who, by the way, gets all the credit for finding this amazing race—would quickly alert me to that type of situation if it were to occur.)

I went out fast and worried that my unbridled excitement would end up biting me in the butt sometime during the last mile. Instead, I held my pace and felt invincible. I don’t mean to brag, but come on, how many perfect races do you get?

I sprinted across the finish line in 18:07 to grab first-place honors in the women’s race. To be fair, I have a sneaking suspicion that this 5K was missing a few meters. My pal Kim finished close behind me to snap up the silver medal.

I feel obliged to mention that although I edged out Kim for the win in the race, she later destroyed me in the tan-off that took place by her pool.

So even if you’re on the fence about the existence of unicorns, Sasquatch and perfect races, you now have irrefutable evidence that vampires are totally real.  

Run for the money

A couple of weeks ago, I was half-heartedly listening to a recap of college football scores while giving my toenails their last coat of polish before fall. I say “half-heartedly” because the level of artistry that goes into masking the grotesqueness of my feet requires a high degree of concentration.

When they started talking about ridiculous blowouts, my ears perked up and my foot flinched. In an instant, my impeccable paint job was ruined by an errant streak of Midnight Sapphire on my big toe. Why? Because there is one part of college football that has always fascinated me: money games.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with this phenomenon, the simplest and least tasteful explanation can be delivered in a single word—prostitution.

Early in the season, powerhouse schools like to schedule an easy game or two to dust off the cobwebs, build confidence and impress their home crowds with a dominating win. To do this, they seek out smaller, lesser-known teams and pay them to get their asses kicked.

Small colleges usually have small athletic budgets, which makes this sort of deal extremely lucrative for them. Most don’t think twice about pimping out their football teams for 3, 4, even $500,000—or more. Then they put the players on a nice charter plane—compliments the opposing team, of course—and pray that they all come back alive and with the majority of their limbs (and cognitive function) intact.

The result? Scores like “North Carolina-62, Elon-0,” “Florida State-55, Savannah State-0,” and “TCU-56, Grambling State-0.”

In some cases, it’s almost sad. I feel for the guys on the losing side of the scoreboard. I don’t care where you play—if you’re a college athlete, you are a competitive person. And competitive people hate losing.

If it were up to them personally, I’m sure there are some morally grounded players out there who would refuse to lose for cash. Back in my days as a legit athlete, I probably would have agreed with them. But now that I’m just a lowly has-been, I would be willing to bend my ethical standards under the right conditions.

So that got me to thinking—what if they developed a similar system in the world of competitive distance running? I mean, think about it: when people watch world-class distance runners race other world-class distance runners, there is really no way of grasping just how fast they are moving. It doesn’t help that they all look like they’re out on a leisurely joggy-jog when, in fact, they are splitting sub-60s.

But if you threw in a race where world-class distance runners raced middle-of-the-road distance runners—former Big Sky Conference Championship bronze medalists, for example—the audience would be able to see just how good these Olympians really are.

Take Kara Goucher, for example—America’s Sweetheart of distance running. High school cross-country runners idolize her. They probably cheered her on during last month’s Olympic marathon. She finished just a hair over 2:26—a time that most men, even really good ones, could only dream of achieving—which was good for 11^th place.

Except that in America’s eyes, 11^th place is not good. It’s not good at all. In fact, you probably already forgot that Kara Goucher even participated in the Olympic marathon.

Here in the good ol’ U.S. of A., we like winners—the bigger and more embarrassing the margin of victory, the better. The way I see it, there is only one way for Kara to avenge that 11^th place disaster (besides winning gold in Rio, which probably won’t happen if Ethiopia still exists in 2016): winning a race by a laughably obscene margin.

That’s where I (or some other washed-up has-been) would come in. I could be the Grambling State to her TCU. I could sort of, but not really, compete with her and make her look really, really good. I could get her fans all fired up and give her a solid foundation of confidence for the rest of the season. All I would ask for in return would be a small* percentage of her race winnings.

So Kara, once you realize how incredibly genius this idea is, drop me a line. My inbox—and your comeback—awaits.

*Less than a majority** share.

**Between 1 and 49 percent.