Huffing For Stuffing Race Recap

I love a good Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving Day. This is something that was a nice tradition with my family, before I moved to the West. Now that I'm out here, there are a lot fewer runs in general, for any time of the year, but Thanksgiving Day fun runs are catching on and getting more and more popular all the time. Yahoo!


This year, since we were in Bozeman, I participated in Huffing for Stuffing, which benefits the Gallatin Valley Food Bank. They had a goal of 5000 participants this year; Jeff and I both ran and contributed to that goal. Jeff ran the 5K and I ran the 10K.

People milling about before the start of the10K.

 This event featured a 1K kids fun run at 8:00 a.m., a 10K at 8:50, and 5K at 9:15. On the event website, they stated that they had a goal of 5000 participants. They didn't make it that far this year, but it was still the largest race either Jeff or I have done this year. For Jeff, it was his biggest race ever. They had 2763 participants in the 5K and 533 in the 10K. Also according to the website, both races were actually longer than their advertised distances. The 5K was actually 3.3 miles and the 10K was actually 6.7. More bang for your buck, I guess!

The race began and ended at the Museum of the Rockies. 

We had picked up our packets ahead of time when we rolled into town on Wednesday evening, so we didn't have to do that on race day. I have to say, that as this race has gotten bigger the race packet swag has diminished. The last time I did this race, about 5 years ago, they had actual goodies and trinkets in the packets. This time, mostly a bunch of stickers and coupons we weren't likely to use as out-of-towners. And strange fliers... The strangest was a flier for the local funeral home. Huh?! What's this in there for, anyways? In case you DIE during the race, please look up our professional interment services? What?!

The race t-shirts were pretty cool this time around, though. They are a soft, polyester blend, and I LOVE the color! My only problem with the shirts are that I ordered the wrong size, but that's my fault, not theirs. I should have ordered one size smaller. Still an awesome shirt, though, and I think I'll wear it a lot.

Ok. Now for the race itself. Jeff dropped me off in time to warm up for the 10K, then he went and tracked down some earphones so he could listen to music during the race. He got back in time to see me start. I had lined up in the 9-minute mile pace group. The race started on time, but with so many people, it took a long time for me to finally get some room to reach my actual stride and pace.

Looking over the fence from the 9-minute group starting bucket, before the race. 

 It looks like it's horribly cold in my photos, but the weather was actually pretty nice. It was about 40 degrees with minimal wind when the 10K began. I actually felt like I was just slightly overdressed at times. I wore my Moving Comfort track sweatpants, a thermal performance turtleneck from Columbia, a sparkly MSU quarterzip shirt from Under Armour, and my Team Beef jersey for the irony of promoting beef on Turkey Day. Sadly, no one commented about my beef shirt. Oh well.

 As I was saying, the beginning of the race was really crowded and I had a hard time getting into position for the first mile or so, which was also a gradual uphill climb. My first mile had me questioning my sanity-- I still had 5.7 miles to go! What was I thinking?! Once I finally hit the first mile marker after what felt like much longer than a mile, I leveled out my pace. I broke it down in my mind and thought about just one mile at a time. First mile: done. Now, let's get this next mile in faster than the first. And so on.

I took this photo looking back over my shoulder at runners silhouetted along the horizon. This was sometime in mile 2.

Even though the weather was warm, the roads we were running on were covered in a melty icy slush, so that created some tricky footing at times, too. At one point, I followed a bunch of people and ran on the sidewalk instead of the road because the sidewalk had been plowed better and was dry. I did this for about a mile, then decided I was getting too boxed into a running order and went back to the street.

You can sort of see the slush on the street in this photo.

 The course for both races were loops, with the beginning and end of each running concurrently. By close to the end of mile 4, we 10K runners found ourselves running with the 5K pack. Once again, the course was jam-packed and it was a little more difficult to jockey for space and dodge runners and walkers.  This actually made the race feel like it was going faster than it was, though, too. There was a lot to think about and look at so it made time feel like it was flying for the last few miles of my race. Eventually, I ran into Jeff along the course, too! It was so cool to see him and share a brief moment, before we each continued on at our own pace.

That's Jeff in the brown fleece!

Something else that made this race a lot of fun was that there were a lot of people cheering along the route. I snapped a blurry photo of this guy playing his banjo and singing (below) and I also saw a person in a gorilla suit giving out free high-fives. A couple houses along the route had speakers blaring music as we ran by, too. That helped the race fly by, too.

Sorry for the blurry image!
By this point in the race, I was not interested in stopping to take any photos-- so close to the finish line!

 Even though the races were both longer than an actual 5K and 10K, the race organizers were good enough to mark the exact 3.14 and 6.2 mile distances along the course, for those of us who were curious how our times would stack up. I was so glad they did this! I hit the 10K line in a time of 58.36! My new ATB in the 10K distance! It's easy to get a PR or ATB when you've only done a particular distance two times, but still awesome! The only other 10K I've done was back in September, the Kickin' Assphault 10K and Half Marathon.

Here's the breakdown of my mile splits:

Mile 0-1: 9.43.94
Mile 1-2: 9.23.59/19.07 total time
Mile 2-3: 9.11.28/28.18
Mile 3-4: 9.02.99/37.21
Mile 4-5: 10.07.15/47.28
Mile 5-6: 9.07.10/56.36
Mile 6-6.2: 2.00.22/58.36
Mile 6.2-6.7: 4.14.03/1:02.5

So, my first mile was one of my slowest, as I said, I think because of all the people and the slight uphill for the whole first mile. Then I got faster and faster for a while. Mile 4 was particularly slow because there was a very steep uphill for a little ways that really got me, and I walked for a minute or so, then it was also in that mile when we joined back with the 5K people. The rest of the race I was pretty much on pace.

Approaching the finish line!

It was so cool to see the finish line and know that I had beaten my previous 10K time, and also just to be DONE with the race felt great!

I knew Jeff wouldn't be too far behind me, so I waited near the finish line to cheer him in, and then we took a minute to catch our breath and snap a photo together. There was lots of post-race snacks-- the usual bagel pieces, orange segments, bananas, and also hot cocoa, but we opted to just get back to Katie and Josh's house and get showered so we could be ready to watch the Bears game and help prepare Thanksgiving dinner. We also knew that with so many people running the race, there was no way either of us had won any prizes or placed at all.

Since the race was chip-timed, we got our results emailed to us right away. My official chip time for the race was 1:02:31.59. I was 306 out of 533 total 10K runners, and 51 out of 97 female age 30-39 runners. I'm just happy I beat my previous 10K time when I crossed the 10K line, and finished the race. This was the longest distance I have ever run. Even when training for this event, the longest I ever did was an even six miles. It felt good, as always, to complete a race, to validate the culmination of my training and determination, and to do it with Jeff.

What's next in my racing world? Probably not a lot for a long time. I'm hoping to do a race somewhere on St. Patrick's Day, but we'll see if that works out. Otherwise, it may not be until the Icebreaker in April that I get in a race. I'm thinking pretty hard about doing a virtual race of some sort in January and/or February, just to give myself some motivation to stay in shape. There's also Shape Up Montana starting in February, which I'm sure Jeff and I will do again this year. Anyone else have any fun racing, running or fitness plans coming up? Did you do a Turkey Trot or other race over Thanksgiving? Have you ever done a Virtual Race?