I can’t believe how many turkey trots there were this weekend! There were tons of them throughout Long Island and I’m sure across the country.  Each one raised money for a deserving charity and each one had hundreds of people attend.

I decided to go to the Turkey Trot in Garden City this morning. It was a 5 mile race.  It was a cold, dark day with a threat of rain.  My husband, Brian and I drove to the location and found that many of the streets were closed off.  So we parked about a ½ mile away from the start of the race.

When we got ourselves ready, we walked over to St. Paul’s Cathedral where the race was starting and went into the gymnasium for our numbers and t-shirts. It was so crowded.  There were hundreds and hundreds of people. Everyone was eager to start.  We saw the 1K family fun run ending and we knew it was almost time.

There was no way I was going to go to the bathroom again.  The last time I went before the 10K in Long Beach, I almost missed the race.  I wanted to run with the pack.  I wanted to experience that feeling of competition.  So two minutes before the fire truck blew it’s horn, we were standing with hords of people eager to get started.

The fire truck blew the horn and the race started. The first mile, as always, was tough.  It felt as if it was going on forever.  It seemed like that mile would never come.  But it did and then mile 2, 3 and 4 came up very quickly.  We weren’t running as fast as we were in the Long Beach Turkey Trot but we were going at a steady pace of 13-minute miles.

It was an interesting course.  We ran alongside the Garden City Country Club.  We went passed Adelphi University and we passed some magnificent houses.  The terrain was hilly in parts.  The uphill was tough.  But the downhill made up for it.

The difference between this race and the Long Beach race, there were people in the streets cheering us on.  That motivated me to keep going.  There were so many people in front of and behind us that I really felt as if I was in a “real” race.

There were people everywhere. People running with their children, people running with their dogs, couples running and so many people on the streets cheering us on.  It was incredible.

During the last mile, the song, Cathedral by CSN came on my ipod.  It’s one of my favorite CSN songs.  The tune drove me to the finish line, especially during the upbeat parts of the song when CSN sing, “open up the gates of the church and let me out of here….”

It was such an appropriate song especially since we started and ended at a church.  What an amazing day. Can’t wait for the next race… I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!

This post, originally featured on www.hilarytopper.com, was written in 2010.

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