God, I love turkey trots. You start the holiday out right with some quality exercise and then go stuff yourself with turkey and trimmings. Last Thanksgiving I ran in the 2004 Dallas Turkey Trot with 10,000 other people through downtown Dallas. This year, I was in Birmingham, so I ran the JCC 10K Thanksgiving run with a friend of mine. She's training for a marathon, so she can go forever without getting tired.

I thought an 8:00 pace sounded challenging for me (for six miles), so we started out at that pace. She thinks she can't run that fast, but she's doing well. She dragged me to the finish for the last three miles for an average pace of 8:17 (total time 51:23). I am ashamed to say that is my very first 10K, so I can call that a PR. I have such a short attention span that I haven't been interested in longer races, save for one 8 miler in Connecticut when I was 21. We finished 5th and 6th out of 47 in our age group. My friend's father told her he doubted she could run that fast of a pace, so I was proud of her for not listening to him.

Anyhow, we had a blast. I'm up to six miles in my training runs as well. And I love the desolation of the Lakeshore Trail in late fall. The trees are bare, leaves rustling on the ground, and the path is sparsely populated, leaving me to concentrate on the run.