Silicon Valley Turkey Trot 2021: let's chase that bird, despite headwinds!

I can't believe I've yet to write my race report for... last year's Turkey Trot! I was hoping for this long weekend but that may still wait for a few days, or weeks. For the interest of catching up, what about going straight to this year's edition, while it is all fresh!

Hard to believe, too, that we are still not off the COVID rut, not even close given the latest developments in South Africa this week, and the worrying trends in Europe and North America in particular. Some well informed people claim that we may live the rest of our lives with that Sword of Damocles above our heads, so unreal or, rather, surreal. And depressing given the clivage of our society with regard to the various health protection options at our disposal.

Additional headwind for me, the loss of my father 3 weeks ago. He was in his 99th year so that wasn't a total shock but he had showed us so much resilience, we had come to believe he was invincible. Beyond the deep pain with the disappearing of such a pillar for our family, I spent the last 3 weeks working double shifts to address my mom's uncertain situation as she lost short term memory, temporal and spatial orientation, several years ago already. A challenge to keep living on her own.

Then, coming on Thanksgiving, the anniversary of my 2018 running injury... While it seemed so benign 3 years ago, it's still unbelievably persisting. My sports medicine doctor in France had mentioned that "it was going to be long" back in 2019 but I never believed he was counting in years... I saw him while staying with family this month and, finally, he accepted to give me a PRP injection in that fissured tendon, acknowledging that he didn't think it was going to be that long to heal, initially. In 2019, he hesitated because the tendon is so deep, he feared a potential infection which would have been extremely damaging on the pelvis, and hard to fix. This time, it was my turn to fear that terrible outcome for the little expected guaranteed benefit. It it wasn't for a sudden calf pain in September, I still could have managed to compete for the peak of the season in October as I did through 2019 and 2020, I learned how to cope with the pain in my butt by shortening my stride. Incidentally I also got an MRI 2 weeks ago which shows the healing is progressing. Albeit slowly indeed, but surely. With that, I decided to pass on the offer and let Mother Nature keep doing what I've been waiting for 3 years already, self-healing.

So much for breaking such a long silence due to lack of running, training, racing. With work filling most of the void, which isn't so sustainable...

With that, I registered to the Turkey Trot the day before, on Wednesday! I have to say that the first motivation was not to break the streak of getting these great t-shirts, as well as contributing to the charitable goal of this endeavor initiated by Carl Guardino in 2005 when he was the CEO of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group. More than $1 million were raised this way since, with the trot becoming the largest one in North America, surpassing 20K participants! Of course, gathering so many people in one place has become irresponsible during the COVID days, we were invited to run our 5 or 10K virtually, like the past 2 years. 13 years out of 17 for me!

Including a few years when IBM joined as a sponsor when I was part of the local leadership team.

While I was at it, I registered the whole family again and Agnès got the VIP treatment from Chris, the Race Director, while collecting our tops at Sports Basement before picking me at SFO after my long flight back from these 3 weeks in Europe.

On Thursday, I decided to check if our Cupertino High School track had reopened after the long COVID hiatus. I was so excited to see it had, even on a Thanksgiving morning, I started clocking sub-1:30-laps, something I haven't done for 3 years! So fast that my shoes untied after 600 meters, duh! I stopped my watch, and the RaceJoy tracking app and walked back to the starting line. I had used the app last year, without any issue on a 3K road loop, but I had some doubts it was properly tracking on the track this time. As I was feeling so good, I gave another try, starting from scratch, right away after catching my breath. I clocked a couple of sub 5:50 miles but was still worried when not hearing a message at every mile, as I recalled the app doing last year. I stopped again after 12.5 laps (5K mark), convinced the app wasn't working properly. And called it a day given the effort and sweat. There was a gal clocking 5:30 to 5:40 repeat miles, the speed was inspiring and motivating. Before leaving, I asked what she was training for, she said 2:56 at CIM (California International Marathon) next week. I felt she could run much faster than that! Her first name was Nina and she had an Eastern European accent.

On Friday morning, the excitement was gone: first I was super disappointed that I had misjudged the silence of the app as I believe I could have broken 38' on Thursday, would have I kept going. Because I haven't run that fast since the 2018 injury, I was experiencing some light soreness and I was hesitant to give it all again, one day before racing the grueling and infamous Quad Dipsea. We had until Sunday to log our virtual run, but I didn't see myself sprinting a day after Quad Dipsea... Thursday's excitement and stamina were just gone but I mentally dragged myself to the track again still, with some moral support from Agnès and Max. And Nina was at the track again, this time jogging laps before doing speedy 200-meter repeats.

Without much motivation, and some tiredness, I went on my second 10K attempt. This time, getting under 1:30 at every lap felt much harder. To make the matter worse, there was some... headwind between 50 and 250 meters, which wasn't helping. But I had to get it done that Friday so I kept pushing. I was still clocking 6:05-6:08 miles by the 5K point but let Nina know I'd welcome a pacer, and she joined me for the last 12 laps. Which helped a lot as I was losing steam. I clocked 38:51 for 25 laps or 6:31 miles on my Garmin but the RaceJoy app retained a 38:28 for 6.10 miles, not too far off. As you can see below on the first line with a sub-23 10K, some people might have cut non virtual corners, or we have supra elite runners in Silicon Valley, nowadays! Post-COVID mutants? ;-)

It happens that I was right, Nina can run much faster! CIM will be just a jog, she finished 25th at Boston in October in 2:38:46, and 3rd at the Los Angeles Marathon in 2:37:36, 3 weeks ago! Her name is Nina Zarina and she runs for Russia. At 27, that's her first year at that distance, with a bright future ahead!

Back to the Turkey Trot, I was wearing bib 9140 so I hope we did break 10K participants this year. It's so much harder to get people to register for virtual events, it completely misses the social dimension of getting a crowd out on the streets of San Jose on Thanksgiving morning. Still, 10K is quite a feat given such... headwinds. It was actually comforting to see a few families wearing this year's T at the track on Thursday morning, the word did spread! Kudos to the organizers and sponsors, most particularly the Silicon Valley Leadership Group and Applied Materials, for perpetuating such a great local running tradition in the Valley!

Overall, I'm really glad I got back to the track and was able to break 39 minutes again, despite all the circumstances. Maybe some good karma for 2022, hopefully! And wishing most of you had some great experiences for Thanksgiving, some family reconnections maybe, and renewed hopes for the season and the new year.

Being grateful for killing one bird at a time and keeping moving one step at a time...