Turkey Trot’16

As usual, Silicon Valley Turkey Trot is run on a flat course. With 25000+ runners, it is a very large but a well-managed race (in fact, it is the largest local running event). This remains a very much a fun race for me.
It was also nice to PR with 51:21 (7 minutes off from my last best 10-k race time).

Pre-Race:

Going into this race, I had very good Half Marathon performance to build upon. In addition, I had few very good quality practice runs – nice combination of easy and tempo runs.

Finally, I had started to experiment (barely scratched surface, more like…) with a heart rate monitor. I am still working on detailed feedback on the HRM so more about it upcoming posts.

Anyway, pre-race nutrition was a banana and a cup of tea 45 minutes prior to the race – this proved adequate.

As an aside, I managed to directly (and indirectly) encourage atleast 4  friends/co-workers to join this event – all four showed up and finished their races. I consider this as a large achievement for myself!!

So all in all, I was looking forward to racing this event but also wanted to enjoy the overall atmosphere and my friend’s first races . I was glad I was able to do both.

The Race:

I started kind of easy but maintained a conservative, even-pace method throughout the course. This proved beneficial because I was able to maintain good pace, consistent heart-rate and even cadence throughout.Here are my splits

·         The average cadence was 171 steps/minute

 ·         The average heart rate was also 170  bpm

  Post Race:

 Photo sessions, meeting runners from previous races and nice breakfast snacks provided courtesy of my company J

Cheerio!