Trot, trot, turkeys... Warming up the birds!

The running season is never really over, there are so many race opportunities in our country and in California in particular, we can race all year round nowadays!

I used to take December off but, based on the small issues I encountered upon resuming training, I may just keep running, starting with chasing many birds this week! First will be the Cupertino High School Turkey Trot this Tuesday (2 miles), aka Tino Turkey Trot. Then the most populous Silicon Valley Turkey Trot 10K on Thanksgiving morning this Thursday. Finally, and this is a scoop, the infamous and quads trasher Quad Dipsea on Saturday! I wasn't really looking forward to that additional ultra but the team called for our last club battle of this year's ultra running Grand Prix and I couldn't resist. After all, that is one of the mythical local ultras.

IBM being one of the sponsors of our local Turkey Trot, I sit on the Steering Committee of this event put together by the Silicon Valley Leadership Group led by his CEO, Carl Guardino. It's hard to imagine the extent of the work that it takes behind the scene to organize an event gathering 25,000 participants, 75 elite 5K runners including 4 Olympians, 2,000 volunteers and, most importantly, aiming at raising $1 million just this year! This is the 10th anniversary and the event has already raised $4M for local charities. This is a wonderful family event and it is still time to register, we'll have room for everybody! Besides, the weather forecast gives us a bright sun on Thursday. As much as we need rain to reverse the effect of the extreme drought, a sunny morning is much better to handle such a joyful crowd.

If you haven't, please consider joining us and registering at: http://svturkeytrot.com !

It will be my 6th consecutive SV Turkey Trot: chasing the chicks in 2013, 2012, back to speed work after breaking 15 hours on 100 miles in 2011, outpacing the turkey in 2010, my first CHS/SV back to back turkey trots in 2009 followed by a fall at the Quad Dipsea 2 days later...).

Here we are at our last steering committee last week, looking at the great technical Ts and the finisher medal.

Big thanks to Sports Basement for hosting the Splunk Expo and offering 6 days to pick our shirts and bibs while providing more opportunities to raise money and drop canned food.

Between last week's cross-country championships 10K and this week's 3 races, I had to get my legs moving and keep training for the upcoming Desert Solstice 24-hour in 3 weeks so I hit the track on Saturday for 80 laps. Not quite the average pace given by my Garmin below (the distance gets slightly off with 160 turns...) but I was happy to be able to maintain a very stable pace under 6:30 min/mile for 20 miles. And, for those who wonder how boring this can be to run in circles this way, let me add that it was very distracting to watch the soccer practice of the high school's team for 90 minutes.

With that, I hope to see many of you this week then, to chase the trotting turkeys around the Bay, in Cupertino, San Jose or Mill Valley! Happy Thanksgiving to all!