Thanksgiving Day

Be patient, IMAZ update is coming tomorrow or at least I'm hoping it will. As many of you know, today is Thanksgiving. Additionally, many of you spent the day with family and friends, eating some turkey and all that. So let me begin my rant.

I've never been a big fan of Thanksgiving. Don't get me wrong, I like the idea that we get a few days off work but in general I think it is a contrived holiday. Let's be real about it, Thanksgiving with the Pilgrim and Native American images is quite hockey. The picture of a celebration at Plymouth Rock should really be called "The Big Lie" or "Indian Massacre Kick - Off Meeting". I understand that victors get to write the history books and that the domination of a nation by Europeans isn't something that is new. Honestly, every nation today was or still is built on the genocide of another culture. I'm not trying to say we should give back the land or anything but I think we should all just be honest about it.

Today, I think Thanksgiving is more generally viewed as the beginning of the Holiday Season. Think of it as a Christmas Season milestone. From now through the end of the year, you can get by with blaming your laziness / extravagance / mood / spending / etc on "The Holiday Season". Much like Memorial Day and Labor Day are just milestones of summer’s beginning and end, today does little more than markthe begining of a new season.

Also, with Christmas just 4 weeks away, everyone is making the family visits twice in less than a month. At Christmas, everyone will have already told all the good summer stories already. Can’t you just see yourself sitting with your Aunt saying something like this? “Well, I had a really good racing season. I even set a PR at such and such” only to have your Aunt say “You told me that already at Thanksgiving”. Really? Well nothing interesting happened in the last 4 weeks so let’s just call it a day. So there it is. I’m cool with the holiday marking the end of fall, the beginning of Christmas, or even “Put your Ice Scraper Back in Your Car Day". I just don’t celebrate it like that. That is the end of my rant.

To all of you that were traveling, eating turkey, or looking for your ice scraper, I hope you had a safe and joyous time. I decided to do something else though.

It was a cool and slightly wet morning…this sounds like the beginning of a bad novel. I hopped on my trusty Airborne and went for a ride. My first stop was the “Flying Feather Four Miler” in Dublin to see GS race. He was kind of focused on this event since he likes to go fast. 3,000 people were gathered for this little holiday tradition. GS had a good morning taking 7th over all and 1st in his AG. But oh-my-goodness were there some fast guys there. Who would have thought that a “Turkey Trot” would draw some of the areas fastest Cross Country Runners and Track guys. The first two guys were hauling ass. Sub-21 for a holiday 4 miler is wild. GS put in a good pace and got the AG win over Jeff Henderson. For those that don’t know Jeff, he works at Fleet Feet and does a lot of great work with MIT. He also happens to be the CC coach at Thomas Worthington.

Look at these results:

Place	Name	Age	2Mile	Pace	Time	Pace
1	Neal Holtschulte	25	10:25	5:13	20:28	5:07
2	Jason Bumb	24	10:25	5:13	20:33	5:09
3	Austin Schmidt	22	10:37	5:19	21:35	5:24
4	Tom Lee	23	10:43	5:22	21:42	5:26
5	Cody Pontius	20	10:56	5:28	21:56	5:29
6	Kevin Craigo	24	11:08	5:34	22:20	5:35
7	Greg Sierschula	37	11:10	5:35	22:27	5:37
8	Jeff Henderson	39	11:04	5:32	22:41	5:41
9	Evan Bayles	26	11:34	5:47	22:56	5:44
10	Jess Book	30	11:32	5:46	23:41	5:56

Here is GS in the chase:



Here is GS trying not to get caught:


Besides the number of really fast guys at the front, there seems to be an epidemic of really bright colored racing shoes. Phil Night is personally trying to bring back neon clothing or something. GS looks smooth though because his are stealth black like you can't see them and then BAM, there is neon orange. I guess there is no need to be subtle if you can run like that though. Just for those that are interested, the first and second place guys bios can be found here and here.


Anyway, after the race, I set out for a 3 hour bike ride. It was cold, a little spitting of rain and quite a bit of wind. Even with all that though it was really quite tranquil to be back on my bike and on familiar roads.

Stats
11/18 3 mile run
11/19 3 mile run
11/20 3 mile run
11/25 4 mile run
11/26 50 mile ride (3:00)
163 lbs