Race Recap: Cedar Falls Turkey Trot

Cedar Falls Turkey Trot, 11/25/21 Cedar Falls, IA

Weather: 20 degrees, windy (windchill around 0 degrees)

Terrain: Recreation trails and grass

Distance: 3.1 miles

Course map

When you have a small child, you have to modify your Thanksgiving day workout routine. Gone are the days when I would potentially travel to another area to do a half marathon. No, when you have a six-year-old, you go to the Basic White People Thanksgiving mainstay: the local 5K turkey trot. Fortunately, we have a fun one (fun run?) right here in town! I picked up our packets the day before at the running store. T-shirts are cute and heather-red, bibs have chip timing. We have three cheap turkey hats from Amazon from the race two years ago. Team Gobble Gobble was ready to rock.

Woke up to freezing cold weather. The day before it was in the 50s, but this is Iowa, so it was 20 degrees with a 0 windchill at 8 AM. We drove to the venue and Husband dropped us off and drove 1/3 mile to park and run back to us. Parking for this race can be iffy but fortunately they have satellite lots and even a shuttle from the farthest one. Child was already sort of cranky (possibly from the cold, but more likely because his Mood Switch seems to have been set to Total Butt this week) and he got even crankier during the very short interval between our arrival and the race start, which was promptly at 8:30 as advertised!

Nobody wearing a turkey hat should look that distraught.

We took off through the grassy field, letting Child set the pace, obviously. And his pace was faster than I expected. Child took off at a sprint. Husband easily jogged beside him. I trailed behind slightly gasping for air and semi-hoping Child would trip over a stick or something and I'd have a second to catch my breath. We wound through the grassy trails near the start before rejoining the paved trail and hitting the one-mile mark near the campground (in 11 minutes). Child's mood was oscillating wildly between "yay exercise" and "I don't like that I'm not in first place." My mood was oscillating between "too winded to think" and "I should have eaten more carbs this morning." 

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I was grateful that Child took more walk breaks at this point as we made our way around Big Woods Lake on trails that I've traversed hundreds of times. We hit the mile 2 mark just before the bridge and that mile was in about 12 minutes. Holy smokes, this kid was gonna set a new personal best by a lot. His average 5K pace in his previous attempts was over 17 minutes. We went back near the start and Child was quite upset that we still needed to loop around the frisbee-golf course before finishing. "I'm tired!" Join the club, kid. 

The frisbee-golf course had some hay bale hurdles that I managed to jump over in one bound. Shockingly, Child did as well, despite being approximately 4'4". The walk breaks were becoming even more frequent now and I was almost starting to acclimate to the intense cold that was making my lungs feel like a shattered glass bottle. We looped through the entire park and when he saw the finish line, Child took off at a totally unreasonable pace, insisting that he would at the very least beat his parents in this race. Our finish time: 36:45, which is a new Child PR by 18 minutes. Awesome.

We immediately got in the long line for mini pies, which were our "finisher medals" (medals are temporary, pies last forever). Flavors available were apple, pumpkin, peach blackberry, and raspberry. We got the latter two, since I'd already made the former two at home. A nice cool-down walk to the car and we were out of there.

And I was mildly hypothermic. Happy Thanksgiving!

Pros:

-Logistics. The first year for this race was two years ago, and last year was cancelled due to COVID. They really cleaned up the logistics this time - no more confusion about when/where to start, or the parking situation. 

-Early packet pickup. Nice to have this year.

-Pies. I mean come on. That's awesome.

Cons:

-Terrain. I didn't mind a combination of grass and trails, but it was fairly ankle-breaking grass if you aren't an experienced trail runner (which there are not many of at a turkey trot).

-Iowa. The weather sucked. Not the race director's fault.

-Venue's lack of on-site parking is a bit annoying.

Race Grade: A-. A great local race option that gets the job done, as far as turkey trotting.

Video I took during the race