Amanda checked the map and decided the race was close enough.
I had registered for a Thanksgiving morning Turkey Trot in Colorado Springs and forwarded her the confirmation. It was a straightforward 5K, the kind of holiday race that could fit around everything else happening with family that week.
She said she would register too. Her only concern was the drive.
I checked the distance and told her it should be about twelve miles. She had been thinking of a different place. This one was close.
The twelve miles were the trip to the start, not the race. The running part was still three point one.
That felt like a good distance for where my year had gone. A back and leg problem had taken Lake Placid off the calendar in June. By September, I was running again and had helped start a Reonomy run club down the West Side. A small race with Amanda in Colorado sounded better than another giant training promise.
We were heading west for Thanksgiving with her family. I was trying to get out of town while work stayed busy in New York, and I was already describing the Colorado plans as “mountainy events.” The Turkey Trot was one of the simple pieces.
The plan stopped there for now. I was registered, Amanda intended to register, and both of us still had to get to the start.
For now, the logistics worked: about twelve miles in the car, a 5K on foot, and Thanksgiving afterward.