by Barbara Poelle
Thanksgiving is so awesome, and not just because I get to eat until I am sweating and crying. Thanksgiving is awesome because several years ago, Husband proclaimed it’s a private holiday for just the two of us! Huzzah! Sometimes we go on a trip, sometimes we have a Staycation. But every time, on Thanksgiving morning, Husband and I run in a 5K.
It makes perfect sense if you use that new math that everyone is always talking about: see, if you burn 400 calories by noon, you can eat 2700 calories before 6pm and it equals out. (If you aren’t getting that answer you are forgetting that in 1987, 2700 calories was more like $1.97.)
Sometimes we sign up to run in a sanctioned race with lots of other people and timers and free Gatorade and collectible t-shirts, but other years we plot it out just the two of us (btw, I am addicted to mapmyrun.com). Either way, we get suited up and out the door by 9 am on Thursday. (This is where you can made your rude noises and gestures. Everyone does.)
A few years ago, in an effort to quell the lingering homesickness at not being in MN for the turkey carving, I started asking my family to run/walk a 5K any time on Thanksgiving and send me photos of the finish line. What I imagined was a delightful collage of family members adorned in Adidas and GoreTex, hands raised victorious, sweat still glistening on their brow in the morning sunlight as gentle fall leaves clustered among their feet.
But this is my family, people.
Oh, don’t get me wrong. They did it. But let’s just say some of them wore cashmere. Some of them wore flannel. But all of them carried more than Gatorade in their water bottles.
And thus, we are finally here, The Fourth Annual Poelle Polish Turkey Trot and Gobble Wobble ™ is upon us! (I know, I was such a nice Polish girl before I got a French last name from a Swedish Husband. New math strikes again.)One of these years I am going to make collectable t-shirts. I think they would feature a Turkey wearing flannel Diane VonFurstenberg and clutching a Cosmorita. That would pretty much sum everybody up in one look.
The rules are fairly straightforward. All you have to do is start walking/jogging at one place and then 3.2 miles later, you take a photo and send it in. If 3.2 miles later you are on your third rum toddy, who cares? As long as you wobble over the finish line you are still a competitor.
Because ain’t that just the truth? I was in California for a mystery writers conference this last weekend and in one of my panels I was blathering away about researching the right agent for you or whatever and then I just stopped and said, “Wait, before you do any of that, you MUST do something first. When you type the last sentence of your novel, even if it is a burnt-around-the-edges-raw-in-the-middle draft, you need to celebrate that victory! You wrote a book! You crossed the finish line! Everybody gets a medal at the finish line!”
In fact, take it one step further, I think you should go out and buy yourself a gift and WRAP it up and put it in your writing room. It will be a great carrot on the stick and then when you type that last page you can bust into it like me hitting the green beans and cream of mushroom on Thursday. (And wow, that is just total carnage.)
Okay, everyone, have a safe and happy Thanksgiving.
I’ll see you at the finish line.
