2009 Detroit Turkey Trot

Today I ran my first Detroit Turkey Trot. I chose the 10K (6.2 miles) event, and completed it in 47:47 (mm:ss). For the second time this year I beat my personal record for a 10K race. This time my improvement over my previous record was 6:56 (mm:ss), a little better than one minute per mile. A nice improvement for a 6 month period.

As for the event, it was really exciting to run with close to 15,000 other runners through the streets of Detroit. I liked the way that both the 5K and 10K runners started together, split up about 2 miles in, and then re-joined to share the same finish line under Cobo Hall. It was also really cool to see so many cheering people lined up along the streets of the course. Although, I'm sure that most of the crowd was there for the Detroit's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

From what I have heard, the organizer's of the event did a couple things different this year. A change that I liked the most was the ability to pickup my race bib and shirt before the event at one of several local Flagstar Banks and New Balance stores. This was very convenient and saved me from having to either make a trip down to Detroit before or deal with a large crowd on race day.

Another change that I liked, but that did not turn out so well, was the ability to pre-purchase a parking pass when I registered for the event. Three days prior to the race I receieved an email stating that the parking passes were mailed out. If for some reason I did not receive the pass, no worry my name would be on a list. As luck would have it, the pass never came in the mail and when I arrived at the designated lot, the attendant had no list. From what the parking attendant told me, I was not the only one who had this problem. In retrospect, it would have made more sense to me to pass out the parking passes when I picked up the race bib and shirt verus mailing them out. Maybe next year the organizers will have this problem solved.