Anyone Care to Join Me in a LetsRun Self-Reported 4 Mile Turkey Trot?

Like for most of you I’m sure, my Turkey Trot was cancelled (technically postponed until late-January, which I would contend voids its Turkey Trot status), and rightfully so. I’m not complaining, I’m not in great shape anyway, but I wouldn’t mind getting in one half-assed, 85%-time trial type effort (so I guess 85%-assed) before it turns bitterly cold and snowy.

For the last few years I’ve run off and on, worrying that skeletal/form imbalances will prevent me from doing any consistent quality training as I approach my 30s. I was on a roll last winter and early spring, doing consistent, manageable training and getting into probably 17:00/60:00 shape for 5k/10 miles before my job shut down (I won a podunk 4 miler at 5:43 pace with a bit of hills and wind involved on 3/14). After I was laid off from the pandemic I started doing random 16-19 milers after I’d only gone to 10-11 previously, and sure enough I caught an injury flare-up—pain in the area where I had a femoral neck sfx in 2017. I likely could have rested for a few days and eased back into it, but instead my focus broke completely and I started slamming cream-filled bismarcks and playing the old Pokémon GameBoy Color games. Then I got Lymes disease and yada yada yada, out of shape again.

I started running again in August and improved the consistency in September but I am yet to record any of my runs or do any planned workouts. I just run 40-65 minutes five times a week and keep an eye on soreness and tightness throughout my left leg. Such is life. I go faster than I know I should on most of these runs with lots of unplanned LT miles, fast finishes in the last mile of runs and the occasional hill sprint to impress passing motorists. I’m immature like that.

I have a plan to buy some longer running shorts. The ones I wear are all rather short on my 36” inseam and they pressure me to run faster when anyone is in sight. I’m serious, I’m nuts like that. These new baggy trousers would theoretically allow me to peaceably shuffle along as the hobby-jogger I am, totally unnoticed, instead of trying to impress people I’ll never meet because I’ve been made insecure by years of people calling me a “fxg” out of their car windows, and grinding myself to another injury or putting a serious cap on my mileage.

Anyway, I want to do a 4 mile time trial on Thanksgiving day. (My phone just autocorrected day to “Fay,” as in “No, you mean Thanksgiving Fay.” 4 miles has always seemed like the perfect distance for “tempos” that are in truth closer to TTs, and off of which I can extrapolate downward to 5k and upward to 8k/10k, without the pressure of it being a “real” race distance. It’s perfect.

I will pick a flat road course, probably measured only on MapMyRun. I will get super jazzed on caffeine before my run. A modest 23:30 is my over/under prediction. I will let you know the result—probably, as I am unreliable.

Other Thanksgiving Fay Turkey-Time-Trot-Trialers welcome to join, please!