R and J in the USA

November 23, 2024

The biggest challenge of the Salem Turkey Trot was getting there.

We had planned to spend the night before the race near a natural hot spring about two hours from Salem. Instead, after heavily falling snow and dicey roads caused us to turn back from our approach to a mountain pass, we spent the night at a truck stop on the east side of the Oregon mountains. As a result, we had a three-hour drive across the snowy mountains and up I-5 to get to the race in the morning. Though not the pre-race drive we had planned, it was beautiful. Up a snowy road and over a mountain pass through tall, snow-dusted evergreens beside cascading rivers.

Once there we bathed in the high oxygen content of the low altitude air. At 135 feet of elevation, this was the first race we’ve had below 1,000 feet since Anchorage, Alaska, sixty days and ten states ago. After ten states at over 1,000 feet and the past three weeks in the mountains of Colorado, Utah, and Nevada, running near sea level felt like having a ten mile an hour wind at our backs the whole race. We don’t know how many seconds that took off our times, but we both ran well and felt good doing it.

The race started in gray 40-degree weather at Riverfront Park, crossed the Willamette River (it’s Willamette, dammit), ran by the meadows and trees of undeveloped Minto-Brown Island Park, then returned to Riverfront Park. The course was an out and back along a gently curving, gently sloping paved park path. The only hill was the arc of the footbridge that crossed the river near the beginning and end of the race. It didn’t feel like a hill a tenth of a mile into the race, but it felt like one at Mile 3.

The Turkey Trot was second of three races in the City of Salem’s Holiday Fun Run/Walk Series. The other two races are the Frightfully Fun 1K/3K and the Jingle Bell Relay 5K. In addition to the 5K, the Turkey Trot also included a 1K and a 10K.

Official race results have not yet been posted, so we don’t know how we fared in our age groups or overall. We were both pleased with our races, though, and with how we felt during and after.

Detailed Race Report for Running Nerds

When we pulled into Riverfront park, we had just driven a long way, and through a snowstorm to boot, to make it to our 5K race in Oregon on time. Because we had been too late to sign up for the sold out Sunday 5K we had originally planned to run, the Salem 5K was the only Oregon race that fit our time frame. As a result, we had to get to northwest Oregon a day earlier than planned, and we had to drive a lot farther to do it. This also had the impact of making our Oregon itinerary the most pinballish of any state. We would end up doing plenty of back-tracking and extra driving on account of it. We were investing quite a bit to make this particular race fit into the trip, but we knew it was worth it to us to get our 5Ks in 50 states. Luckily, we both had such fantastic races, so by the time it was over, we were completely happy with any opportunity costs we paid to make it happen.

Ryan’s mile 3 was his fastest mile of the trip, clocking in at 6:59, and he ran one of his top four fastest races of the trip overall, with a 22:41 final time. He ran just the race he had hoped to run, now seemingly fully recovered from the setback of the twinge in his calves, though he will continue to be mindful of it moving forward. He intended to run at least sub-eights and then let the rest unfold as it felt natural. He miscalculated the topography of the race on the way out in our out and back, only noticing the slight uphills in the first mile or so and concluding to himself that the last mile would, therefore, be an easy cruise slightly downhill the whole way. In fact, the first mile of the race had equal parts slight uphill and slight downhill that he somehow just didn’t register until the last mile when he realized he was not running downhill the whole time at all. That didn’t seem to stop him as he clocked in his first sub-seven mile of the trip.

When Julie finished her race, she had to go for a brisk walk because she had energy left to burn. When Ryan asked Julie about her race she said, “That was my most successful and well-run race of the entire trip!” She was feeling pretty great about it. It wasn’t her fastest race by a long shot, but, during these middle-of-the-trip races, that wasn’t her goal. Her goal was to do ample recovery and lay down some solid training so that by the end of the trip, in the last ten races, she might do some real racing again. She clocked in at a respectable 27:56 and felt the best she’d felt coming out of any single race of the prior thirty. She nailed her negative splits at 9:15, 9:10, and 8:50 and had an easy-breezy kick in the last tenth of a mile at a casual 6:36 with a max sprinting speed of a low-key 5:59. All that and her average heart rate was 142 (which, if you’ve been following along, you will know that is a BIG win). 

Julie identified seven things that were in her favor for this perfectly managed race that was a real personal triumph. 

1. Training – Thanks to finally catching up on a lot of things, Julie spent the last week hyper-focused on getting back into running at least twice in the week between races. Both of her training runs had been nice easy jogs and both of them had the added benefit of being at altitude. 
2. Nutrition – After bonking in the last race, Julie was very focused on being well-fed before this race. Though she often runs morning races on an empty stomach, this time, she fueled up about 45 minutes before, and it paid off.
3. Restraint – For any of you who have been following along, you will know that running a constant slew of 5Ks has been a tremendous personal growth opportunity for Julie, whose internal sense of ambition, drive, and competitiveness has been unwieldy, at best, consistently taking her over once the gun goes off like an untamed beast within. She has never encountered this wild urge in such a concentrated manner before this trip. Every other major race she’s ever trained for, she has had a training plan. No restraint needed. Julie loves following plans. The wild beast within respects a good plan and the coaches that make them. And, running at home outside of training for a race is not a competitive environment, so it has always been so easy to just run what feels right without even paying attention to times. But, throw Julie in one fun run after the other, with an official start line and an official finish line and any degree of fanfare surrounding them and add on the most enticing of all tempters, a chance to win a fancy medal, and the beast is awakened, and hungry. Throughout the trip and our series of 5K races, no matter what her physical state might have been in any one moment and no matter how truly unnecessary such competitiveness might have been during an activity that had no real stakes or import in the world beyond our own personal entertainment and enrichment, Julie throughout the trip has consistently found it difficult to control these rabid instincts. Well, growth has occurred. She FINALLY seems to have gotten on top of it, able to control her drive to turn it up to 11 without discernment and use it ONLY when she actually wants to compete. For every mile of this race, Julie knew she had multiple levels she could notch it up to, but was easily able to keep in mind what her goals and intentions for this particular race were and was able to stick to them, untempted to use all that extra fuel in the tank just because it was there. This is a personal triumph and a sign that maybe, just maybe, by the end of this trip she might even be able to work her way up to a PR (there’s that ambition again – it’s still there, just more of a domesticated creature now). 
4. Temperature – This was the PERFECT running temperature. It was cold enough that we would be able to dress in long sleeves and stay warm at the beginning, but not get too hot in those long sleeves as the race got going and we heated up from the inside. This is a delicate balance. Oftentimes, when it is a cool temperature, you have to decide if you want to start the race cold, knowing that you will heat up once you start running, or start the race warmed by a long-sleeve knowing that, eventually, you are going to be too hot and will either need to stop to disrobe or just deal with being uncomfortably warm. Here, we were in that perfect sweet spot. We could don our long sleeves and feel warm enough at the beginning, but as we ran and heated up, the cold air on any exposed skin easily kept us feeling cool. It was the PERFECT running temperature.
5. The Course – This was a GREAT running course. It wasn’t perfectly flat, providing the variation that keeps one engaged. The changes in topography were mild and either gradual or slightly undulating hills, easy to ascend or descend, and the scenery was beautiful, keeping it interesting.
6. Happy Thyroid – Perhaps the biggest impact on Julie’s run was a HUGE triumph – and it was medical in nature. Julie has Hashimoto’s, a hypothyroid autoimmune disorder. For many years, it was subclinical, meaning, she showed very few symptoms even though she had it. So, for years, she had opted not to medicate it until it showed up more intensely. In the last year or so, Julie started to notice the inevitable increase in symptoms that she knew would eventually come upon her as her thyroid progressively weakened. She began seeing a doctor about it and finally got on daily thyroid medication in August of 2023. The thing with thyroid medication and this condition is, it takes a little bit of experimentation and monitoring to find the right dose. When we started our trip, Julie had, just previously, had a couple of changes made in her medication and planned to monitor it with her doctor throughout the trip. HOWEVER, her doctor is certified to work in only 11 out of the 50 states and Julie is only able to meet with her on the phone while Julie is in a state that her doctor is certified in. They had a meeting in Virginia, state #1, and Julie had been aiming to grab another meeting in Ohio. Unfortunately, schedules got mixed up and Julie was not able to meet with her then…which meant she wouldn’t have another chance until Colorado…and they didn’t actually end up linking up until Nevada. That means that Julie went 5 months on the same medication without getting a blood test and checking in. When she finally got her blood test in Colorado and then met with her doctor while in Nevada, we got some really great news. The medication was working great and all of Julie’s thyroid numbers were either already in the right spot or quickly heading in the right direction. EXCEPT one number that had started to go just a touch too far in the opposite direction. Julie wasn’t hyperthyroid yet, but was starting to lean in that direction as the medical dose was slightly overcorrecting. When meeting with her doctor, Julie mentioned the symptoms that had started to creep in during the most recent months. If you have been following along with the race reports, you may have noticed them too. She mentioned the bouts of trouble sleeping and that intensity she’d felt in her chest throughout her days, feeling a stress and strain in her chest like she was stressed when she wasn’t and the fact that her heart rate would go crazy in the second mile of races and that, in general, her heart and heart rate were not cooperating in 5Ks. Julie’s doctor knew exactly what adjustment to make in Julie’s meds and indicated that it should actually have a near immediate effect. BOY WAS SHE RIGHT! Julie switched her dose 2 days before the race. She ran this race and, not only was she easily able to maintain a lower heart rate as she’d hoped, but there was NO second mile heart rate spike! As a matter of fact, Julie had returned to the form of the past where her heart rate actually DECREASED over the course of the race as her body got loose, even though she was increasing her speed. YAY! This is such happy news. Julie came out of the race feeling like she had returned to her old self. Who knows what speeds she might have been able to run if she wasn’t so danged able to control her ambition and show a little restraint. So, this is cause for much happiness.
7. OXYGEN! – We love oxygen. Huge fans. Huge, huge fans. While we have both shown increased acclimation to our higher altitude runs, doing less and less sucking wind in races at 5000 or 6000 feet or more, boy was it nice to be back at sea level, or close to it (altitude was about 135 feet). We were just bathing in oxygen, breathing like we owned the place with streams of oxygen just dripping down our faces. It was lovely, and both of our lungs that had benefited from the little bouts of altitude training just ate it up and gave us both that extra boost.

So, our Oregon race was a big success and delight for us both – both seeing progress and a return to form. We are, as our regular reader(s) may have noticed, no longer reporting consistently on the race between Julie and Ryan as, up to this point, the score is consistently Julie: some – Ryan: a lot more. Now that Julie’s heart rate is back on board…who knows. Maybe before the end of this trip, it might be worth reporting on again.