Jessica and I have wanted to do the Detroit Turkey Trot for a few years now but we are usually in Toledo for family events on Thanksgiving day. This year it worked out that we didn't have anything going on until later in the afternoon so we decided to head out with 25,000 Detroit area runners to trot along the Thanksgiving Day Parade route. We did not really know how big of an event this was until the week of the race. People were telling us to get downtown at least three hours early. What?! I am not getting out of bed at 4:00 am on thanksgiving morning. We took our chances and left about an hour before the start of the race. Luckily Jess has a parking pass for one of the garages at the Renaissance Center so we were able to bypass the huge slug of traffic waiting to find parking. We actually found parking right away and were early to the starting line!
We ran into one of Jessica's co-workers who is originally from Ireland. Her parents were in town visiting and her Dad was there to walk the Turkey trot with her. It was cool meeting them and then we went out into the cold weather to get lined up to run. Then we were finally off and running. There were thousands of people running which is always a cool atmosphere to be around. We were not going for any speed records, rather just wanted to enjoy the atmosphere of downtown Detroit on parade day. It was very lively throughout the whole course. People were lining the streets to cheer runners on as they were getting ready to watch the parade which followed the run. There were also a ton of Lions fans out tailgating before the traditional Lions Thanksgiving Day football game. I must admit that I was starting to get hungry smelling all the food they were grilling. Halfway into the run I noticed we had a pretty good pace going. We kept it up for the rest of the run and it was over before we knew it. We went to a bar in the Renaissance Center to have a bloody mary which turned into two bloody marys. We did not know they were going to be the most expensive bloody marys we ever had!
Everything throughout the day went really smooth until we tried to leave the parking garage. It was a traffic jam getting out of there. We must of sat in the same spot for about a half hour. Then we moved little by little and finally we were able to get on our way home for a nap before our Thanksgiving feast back in Ohio. This was a really neat event and I cannot believe how many people are downtown for the race, parade, and football game. Must be like 50,000 people total! It is quite a tribute to how awesome the people of Detroit and metro Detroit are when it comes to getting together for a big celebration. I think we will definitely do this race again if we are in the area on Thanksgiving morning.
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