2013 Ashburn Farm Turkey Trot 10k

The Ashburn Farm Turkey Trot has become somewhat of a family tradition.  We (Michelle and I) first ran the Ashburn Farm5k/10k race for Lukojjo Village in Uganda, Africa "Humble Place" in 2010.  In 2011, we convinced my family to participate and since then it's been a tradition.  Last Thanksgiving, we spent our time in Richmond and missed out on the event; fear not we ran a Richmond 10k that was WAY more challenging!  This year we were back in the Northern Virginia area for Thanksgiving and I made it a requirement that we participate in the race. 

Most people use running a Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving morning as an excuse to eat guilt free later on Thanksgiving day but both Michelle and I agree that we could really care less about Thanksgiving food.  In fact, whenever we host our first Thanksgiving we will probably do a modern take on the whole ordeal and put a twist on the food like fresh cranberry salsa instead of cranberry sauce, etc.  I digress.

In 2012, I managed to run a 49:12...on a hilly course...in a turkey costume!

Last year, I debuted the Turkey costume at the Richmond Road Runners Club (RRRC) 10k Turkey Trot, held on the Richmond University campus, and it was a total riot!  It was super fun to run in the costume and most folks got a kick out of it, although some of the runners didn’t like being beat by a guy in a turkey suit.  The field there is much more competitive and time focused compared the Ashburn Farm Turkey Trot, which is more family friendly.

Despite the success of the Turkey Costume with the crowd, it needed a few minor tweaks to make it comfortable to run in, mainly the fact that the legs will not stay up and the costume wants to fall down from the running motion.






Enter Michelle!  Have I said how much I love her lately?  I knew elastic was needed to make the legs stay up but wasn’t quite sure how to make it work with how the costume is designed.  Michelle suggested attaching them to a pair of shorts (genius) and I had an older pair of Nike Shorts that I don’t wear as much that matched pretty well.  The result: Turkey leg waders.

I also wanted to replace the brown cotton shirt that I wore under the turkey costume last year and picked up a red suit off Amazon post Halloween for $19.  The red of the costume and the one piece suit looked like they matched well. Unfortunately the skin suit didn't match the description that noted it had a removable hood, which would work with the turkey costume.  Instead the hood was attached when I received the suit in the mail.


On Wednesday, Michelle and I swung by the church for shirt and bib pickup.  We had the been assigned the task of picking up all ten shirts and race bibs, which I decided to neatly fold and arrange for the photo to the left.  As a group, eight of us planned to participate in the 5k while Michelle and I had registered for the 10k.  This year marked the 20th annual race and the shirts were pretty cool but I was disappointed they strayed away from the Humble Village shirts.

Packet pick up at Crossroads United Methodist Church

The slideshow playing of the work Crossroads has done with Lukojjo Village in Uganda, Africa

L-R: My parents, Michelle and I, my aunt and uncle and two cousins, 

and my sister and her husband.

Pre-race we always hang out and spend time in the Church staying warm and watching the slide show they put together that shows the work they do with the Humble village in Uganda.  Eventually, we all made our way out to the start line and waited in the cold for the race to start.

I thought I remembered a start arch in previous years?

Waiting for the race to start in the cold weather.

I decided that after Saturday's 50 mile run, I was going to take the run easy and enjoy running with Michelle.  Michelle and I have never run a race together, we have run in the same race but we have never run together.  Like an amateur, I forgot to put on my watch this morning with all of the excitement for debuting my new turkey costume but Michelle saved the day by downloading the Strava app. and signing me in to record the run.

This was early on in the race on the way out maybe one mile in.

You can see the cones on the opposite side of the road where we would be on the way back mile ~5.

Michelle and I planned to run at her pace for the race, which is typically around the 10:30-11:00 pace, but she went off at around a 10 minute pace and managed to maintain close to that pace for the entire race.

Michelle had plenty of energy at this point in the race.

On the way out at the first of many intersections.

We talked for most of the race and had fun joking about how awesome we looked.  All of the folks that were cheering alongside the road laughed at us and got a good kick out of our costumes.  The rest of the race was rather uneventful including two out and back where we had the opportunity to see the leaders of the race!

I snagged these photos while running with my TS4.

The first out-and-back where we saw the faster runners!

On the way back on the opposite side of the road from the above photo.

Mile 4.5 or so.

Mile 5 - this was a false flat despite how the grade appears in the photo.

Michelle had her phone with her using Strava to record the run but opted not look at it until around mile five when she realized she could run sub 1-hour and decided to push it toward the end.  We moved pretty quickly during the last mile and worked well pushing each other until crossing the finish line.  We were so close but in the end crossed the finish line at time of 1:00:11.

Michelle and I post finish!

We found our friends Tim and Dana post race and then headed inside to grab some of the refreshments they have offer.

It was another awesome year of turkey trotting with the family and friends and starting out an awesome family day with exercise! I seriously love doing this and hope that we continue to do it every year!

Check out some of my past race reports from this race: 2009 and 2010

Strava run data for the 2013 Ashburn Farm 10k