The Turkey Trot

Well, we're up in Fort Kent for Thanksgiving... a couple of inches of snow and ice are on the ground, and the temperatures are their typical 10 degrees (F) cooler than down in western Maine... but I love it up here, in my homeland.

So, as we pull in yesterday afternoon, my Dad asks me, "Hey, now that you're a runner, do you want to go into town with me tomorrow for the Turkey Trot?" After I laughed at being called a runner (but had that secret pride nonetheless, especially from my Dad, who has been a runner and Nordic skier for the last 30+ years... trains with Olympians... he likes to run), I decided to go along with him, my brother Pete, and two of my nephews to the Turkey Trot 5K Charity Walk/Run.

The charity part of the event is to raise funds for the sports program at the Fort Kent Elementary School, which is fine by me. The 5K part was a bit daunting... Remember, my END goal for this blog is to get up to 5K, and the farthest I've run so far is one very slow mile back on Veterans Day. Well, so what? I figured I'd just walk by myself and let the fit members of the family do the run.

And that's pretty much what happened, except my Dad decided to walk with me. We had a great time talking about various carpentry projects he's doing, the horse barn I'm building, his ridiculous interactions with the Maine State Department of Education (I'll explain in some future post), fun things happening at my work, and just the sundry things we never get to regularly talk about because we live six hours apart and neither of us like talking on the phone much. It was the best 51 minutes I've had in a long time.

So, like I said, we did the 5K at a walk in 51 minutes, which is about my regular pace, and it was a great time, for which I'm quite thankful.