Columbia Turkey Chase

On November 18th, I decided to travel up to Columbia, MD an participate in the first annual Columbia Turkey Chase 10k.
I am glad that I did.  I had a very good race.  This was an out and back, fast and fairly flat course.

This was put together by Rip it Events.

This is a fairly new organization that started up a couple of years ago.  I participated in the first event that they put on, the Maryland Olympic Duathlon.  It was called Duthe2.  It was, in my opinion, a well run event.

Well the Columbia Turkey Chase was no exception.  I did packet pick up the morning of. I had a little issue getting to the start only because of my GPS.  Packet pick up was no issue.  I got my swag bag and headed back to my car to drop off the stuff.  I had enough time to hit the porta potties.

I would like to just say that when I sign up for an event, I like to know as much as possible about what I am getting myself into. I try to familiarize myself as much as possible with the layout of the start area, the course itself and the finish line.  This would include parking, packet pickup, aid stations, porta potties etc.  
Well while I was standing in line, some people were talking to each other about whether or not there were aid stations on the course, if there was parking at the relay point, and if there were porta potties on the course and at the relay point.  All of this was covered on the website.  I decided to do my good deed for the day and answer their questions without judging them.

Anyway, I did my business and was able to warm my legs up a little bit before the start.

So the details of the event was a 10k run, 2 person relay and a kids fun run.  With the run they had three waves.  The first wave was for physically challenged athletes, the second wave was 10k and relay runners and the final wave was the Kids fun run.

The course was out and back with minimal hills. In fact the elevation gain was only 164 feet.  There was no cut off time and I was a little surprised about that but was also not worried about it.  With regards to aid stations this is the first time that I felt there were too many.  For a 10k, I would think that 1 maybe 2 would be enough.  Well they had 4.  Anyway, one great thing about this event is that it was benefiting Little Things for Cancer.  Honestly I don't know a thing about this organization and I was not doing this race because of the charity but I was happy to be able to support it. 

Over all this event was excellent.  RipIt Events is a top notch organization that puts on some great events.  I am looking forward to what they have up their sleeve next. 

I ran very well and looking back I probably had more left in the tank but I did not want to go out too strong as I was focusing on my Half Marathon coming up on December 1st.   I actually recorded a personal best in the 10k distance at:  53:48