Thanksgiving

Middle of the pack

This year Thanksgiving started off like the last two, I ran a 5K race. This year it was back in downtown San Jose like the first Turkey Trot I ran in 2011. Last time I ran they had 21,000 runners and this year I ran with 25,000 of my closest friends. I like when they close a downtown to let people run in the middle of the street. This time we ran past city hall and then past the arena where the San Jose Sharks play. It was fun and they fixed some of the problems they encountered 2 years ago. Last time the finish line narrowed and everyone walked for about 2 minutes before going over it. In case you were wondering my finish time was 35 minutes and 22 seconds.

After I finished

That is faster than I have run in the past 2 years. I will keep going with my running, but I'm not sure what I will try to do next year. The first year I ran I had a goal to run 2 5K races a month. That was hard to do, but I ran 24 races that year. This year I wanted to run 12 10K races a month. I only ran 3 races that were 10K or more, but I have run 11 races so far and I will run one more next month to finish my goal of 12 in the year. I'm thinking of joining a running club that runs every Wednesday and try to do as many as I can when I'm not on the road.
After I ran I came home and cleaned up and got ready for Thanksgiving dinner with my daughter. On Monday we went food shopping and decided what we would eat. When I got home I waited for a while for her to come over and she was a little late so I put the turkey in so we didn't have to wait too long to eat. The turkey took 4.5 hours to cook. So when she came over we just talked and watched tv for a while. We started preparing the other food when we had about an hour and a half before the turkey was done.

Sarah prepared dinner

The salad was easy so I threw everything in a bowl and mixed it all up, we bought a bag with the salad and croutons and dressing so it was easy and tasted good. She peeled the potatoes and I cut them and put them in to boil. When done we prepared the mashed potatoes together experimenting with how much milk and butter to put in. They turned out great! The corn was easy, microwaveable. The turkey came out and while we waited for it to cool we made gravy. I had researched it to find out what was the best way. I found the flour in my cabinet, and looked at the expiration date, 3/2009! Oh well ... I put all the drippings from the turkey pan into a bowl and put it in the fridge for a few minutes so the oil would separate. Then we put in the drippings, oil, and flour and it didn't work out right. Too much flour and it looked more like potatoes and gravy then it did gravy! Sarah suggested we throw it would and start over so we did and it turned out great!! We ate and were stuffed. We waited for an hour and had strawberry cake. Sarah left soon after because she was going to go shopping at the mall at 11pm. We had a good time and I had a great Thanksgiving! The only thing missing was my oldest 2 daughters, but they were with us in our thoughts.

25,000 runners waiting to start