Turkey Trot . . . Not

For the last few years, we have run destination 5-K races on Thanksgiving Day.  It is a great way to celebrate and to give thanks for good health and for still being, at our advancing ages, runners in (reasonably) good health.  Turkey Trots are the most popular races in the country, with nearly a million people running/walking them since the first one in Buffalo, New York, in 1896.  They’ve been around since before the Boston Marathon (1897), and they are often non-competitive events for the whole family.  In my earlier running days, I have run races on Thanksgiving Day in places as distant as Orlando and Charleston, sometimes alone, sometimes with our daughter Katy or in recent years with Martha.

Our most recent streak began in 2018, when we ran the Turkey Strut in Winston-Salem, and in a huge field of participants, Martha placed third.  In 2019, we ran the Run for the Turkey in Greensboro and both placed second.  In 2020, we and millions of other runners did not run any races at all because of the Covid-19 epidemic (so we discount that year in our unbroken streak), but in 2021 we ran the Sunrise Rotary Turkey Trot at Lake Junaluska, a place we had never visited before despite its proximity to Highlands; I took placed first and Martha third.  And last year, we ran the Turkey Trot in Williamsburg, Virginia, and Martha placed fourth.  So despite being non-competitive, we have done pretty well on Thanksgiving mornings.  The interested follower of this blog can read about all of these modest exploits in my archives.

This year, we signed up for the Turkey Trot in nearby Hendersonville, and Martha was even able to snag the last two reservations at Season’s Restaurant at Highland Lake Inn in Flat Rock, together with rooms at the Woodward House.  We have always stayed in one of the rustic little cabins at Highland Lake Inn, but last year we had checked out this much larger space and wanted to give it a try. 

It proved to be one of the nicest rooms we have ever stayed in and was very close to both the starting line of the race on Thursday morning and the Flat Rock Theater, where Martha was also able to snag the last two seats at their annual Christmas Show.  (How she manages these feats of reservations remains a mystery to me, but I am thankful for her skill and her foresight.)

To be honest, we had both been having some qualms about the race ahead of time.  We learned that there were 1400 runners, and that only four awards would be given:  first place male, first place female, farthest traveled, and “mystery time prize.”  Placing is not everything, especially in a big race like this, but it is nice to know how you measure up against others in your age group.  The decision not to “Trot” this year, though, had nothing to do with race size or temperatures (predicted to be in the low 30s), but with an injury I inflicted upon myself 12 days before the race.  Following a good four-mile run in town that day, I went down to our raised-bed gardens to take care of a final late-fall harvest, that of digging up for winter storage my dahlia tubers.  This was my first year for growing dahlias and they had done well, and my simple, low-exertion chore was to dig them up and to pull up the wooden stakes that had secured them during the season.  It has been so dry that those stakes were stuck fast in the dirt, and when I jerked them up in a sideways motion, I instantly felt something pull in my back.  To make a long story short, muscles in my lower back were so painful that they required a visit to Dr. Sue Aery, our local chiropractor, and several days of rest and doses of ibuprofen.  By the time we left for Hendersonville on Wednesday, although I was improving, I knew that I could only finish this Turkey Trot at a Walk.  Martha had been having some issues with her neck, too, and had visited Dr. Sue several times.  So we decided that we would break our streak of Turkey Trots this year and simply enjoy our stay at Highland Lake Inn and Thanksgiving Dinner at Season’s.

I admittedly was feeling a little runner’s guilt on Thursday morning, but I awoke early, went outside for Tai Chi, and managed to run perhaps a mile around the empty roads on the 26-acre property where we were staying.  Since a child, I grew up thinking that it was an improving thing to do to walk or run on Thanksgiving morning.  I remember when I was a young child my brother and I being taken on a walk by my Dad in order to, as he termed it, “work up an appetite.”  (Or as my Mom probably termed it, “getting us out from under her feet.”)  And what a wonderful aroma greeted us when we would return to the house and smell that turkey in the oven!  Good memories.  That one mile around Highland Lake Inn made me feel that I was honoring the tradition as best I could.  And dinner was wonderful, as it always is at this restaurant, which we have enjoyed on Easter, Mother’s Day, and Father’s Day, but never before on Thanksgiving Day.  

Black Friday for us involved nothing more commercial than a “window-shopping” visit to downtown Hendersonville and a visit to Oklawaha Brewing down the hill on First Street, where we enjoyed good beer and grilled-cheese sandwiches and played a spirited game of Scrabble.  In the afternoon, we drove to a place we had discovered a couple of years ago, Point Lookout Vineyards, located on the slopes of Point Lookout Mountain with 30-mile views.  We enjoyed a glass of wine and a very good charcuterie plate before driving back to Flat Rock.

Our final event of the day was the Christmas Show at the historic Flat Rock Theater, which thoroughly entertained us (and I am not always easy to entertain at song-and-dance shows).  There was laughter, and dancing (by the Flat Rockettes), and beautiful music.  And what a wonderful venue – the oldest playhouse in North Carolina and the State Theater.  The history is an interesting one: 

Flat Rock Playhouse’s roots go all the way back to about 1940. A ragtag group of struggling actors that called themselves the Vagabond Players was formed in New York in the late 1930’s. They were led by London native and Broadway actor Robroy Farquhar.  This troupe of actors worked their way down the east coast and ended up in Henderson County around 1940. They were attracted by the growing tourism industry in the area and established themselves as the first summer theatre in North Carolina. The Vagabond Players took over an old grist mill at Highland Lake and established the Old Mill Playhouse, which became the actors’ base in 1940 and 1941.

It was a memorable Thanksgiving despite the tradition of a Turkey Trot, and we returned home on Saturday filled with gratitude for good health, family and friends, and the love that we share for each other.  There is much to be thankful for.  And yes, that back has improved enough that I was able to run a mile or so this morning, and my sights are set on another race next Saturday.