Turkey Trots & Other Surprises

As I sit here in my cozy little sunroom, soaking in the afternoon light before dusk settles in at 4 p.m., I’m guzzling ice water and stretching my legs over a foam roller. I ran a 5K this morning along the trail, just like I have almost three times a week for most of this summer and fall.

It still makes me laugh, because for years I told people I wasn’t a runner. Yet here I am on Turkey Trot Eve, race packet and mini pumpkin pie on the table, raffle ticket in the bucket to win Goodr sunglasses, lacing up my Brooks Ghost Max II shoes in coconut cream. I’m on my second pair this year because—apparently—I put miles on them.

Which is funny, because for the first 28 years of my life, I despised distance running.

My brother and I were active kids, constantly sprinting around the neighborhood playing wiffle ball, hide-and-seek, catching fireflies, or stalking garter snakes along the creek. We swam every summer day. I rode my bike up and down the cul-de-sac, trying to hop curbs or beat my personal lap time around the blacktop circle. I played soccer, softball, and basketball. Cardio was never the issue.

My mom, though—she was a distance runner. She trained daily for 5Ks, 10Ks, and half-marathons. One year, my dad jogged me through downtown to catch her at different points along the Hospital Hill Run. “The thrill of the Hill,” they say. I mostly remember her flushed cheeks and proud smile at the finish line.

Eventually, she signed us up for a Mother’s Day 5K every spring. At first, she tugged me along as I lagged behind, a chubby-cheeked fourth grader trying not to cry. Then puberty hit, and suddenly I was sprinting ahead at the starting line with my iPod Nano bouncing from the headphone cord. She loves telling the story of a nearby runner who asked if she was offended that I’d taken off. “Not at all,” Mom said. She always knew it was coming.

Still, I only ran for my mom—not because I loved running. It was cross-training for other sports, nothing more. Then she began to experience shin splints, except they weren’t shin splints but stress fractures. Slowly, then all at once, running left our household altogether.

Until my brother joined cross country.

I remember going to team dinners the nights before a meet. Pasta dinners. Carb loading. Two of my favorite things, so I had no issue with it. I thought, "Maybe running isn't so bad."

So when it came time for me to start high school at a brand new school, my mom suggested trying a fall sport to play. A fall sport meant training and practicing over the summer, so I could go into the semester knowing a few folks. I tried field hockey for exactly one day before switching to cross country (to my mother's delight, of course).

My dad would drop me off outside a little YMCA just off the trail by the Winstead’s on Roe. “Valerie Jane!” my coach — Coach Middleton, or “Mid”— would yell. I couldn’t decide what to go by on my first day, so he chose both names and stuck with it.

That entire summer, I ran the trail with one or two other freshmen who consistently showed up. Three, six, even eight miles sometimes. Mid was there every weekday at sunrise, ready to lead us. That’s when I learned how intense runners could be—stories about varsity girls peeing mid-race rather than slowing down, shirts removed and tucked behind sports bras, gossip dropping like grenades as they took off, chattering in clusters along the path. I ran slowly, in my sweat-soaked cotton t-shirt, and absolutely walked to a bathroom when I needed it.

My mom picked me up afterward, sometimes treating me with McDonald’s fries and a chocolate shake. I’d shower, collapse on the couch, and pass out immediately.

But here’s the thing: after an entire summer of running — literally hundreds of miles — I was not even a little bit faster.

And a few meets into the fall season, my knee started to scream. I was running cross country and playing soccer after a summer softball season, and something had to go. One morning, I stood in front of Mid and told him I had to quit.

No hard feelings. He was my favorite coach, but I wasn’t varsity speed, and we both knew it. Part of me was greatly relieved, because I showed up ready to run each day, not just in pain, but angry at myself for running slowly or taking short walking breaks.

Fast-forward more than a decade. I tore my ACL at 15, recovered, had foot surgery at 23, graduated college twice, became yoga certified, fell in and out of love with soccer, and — this part still feels surreal — ended up teaching journalism at my old high school. Where Mid still coaches cross country.

We co-taught a weeklong experiential class about how athletes’ identities shift over time. I talked about injury and finding alternative movement; he talked about falling in love with the sport through coaching. I taught yoga at a local studio; he mapped out a trail run for the kids.

It had been years since I’d tried real mileage. I had only ever run for weight loss or sports conditioning, and I always “failed” because I never got faster and never lost weight. I forgot that 14-year-old me ran close to a few hundred miles. I didn’t honor that as something to be proud of.

So of course, I laced up my shoes and ran with the kids.

Mid had spent all week saying there are no bad runners: “If you’re running, then you’re a runner.”

But that morning, standing at the same trailhead off 435 and Roe, Mid lined us up, hopped on his bike, and sent us off. The kids bolted. I moved like a tortoise behind a dozen hares, but the cool air felt good. I started the workout on my watch, put my headphones in, and went slow and steady. Eventually, I passed a few of them. I kept repeating what Mid had said all week: You’re running, so you’re a runner.

We finished the 5K just as the rain rolled in. The kids begged to stop at Trader Joe’s, so we let them sprint inside for snacks before heading back to school. I got a massive headache that afternoon. But I’d run the whole thing pain-free. And I wanted to do it again.

Thus: the Turkey Trot.

Quick Note: I actually paused this piece here. I wrote most of it on Turkey Trot Eve. And when I came back to finish it the next day, I did so with sore legs and a smug little smile, because I’d somehow run my fastest 5K ever. A little gift from the running gods, I guess.

Anyway. Fastest 5K aside, the real surprise is that I even showed up to the start line at all.

If you’d told me five years ago that I’d voluntarily become a Turkey Trotter, I would’ve laughed in your face. I would have called it peak Johnson County Mom, white-people nonsense. I would have judged it and assumed I could never enjoy it.

Last year was my first. In October, my mom and I ran a charity 5K at her alma mater, Avila University. We spent the summer running together along the Trolley Trail — flat, soft, forgiving on the joints.

Now she comes over two or three times a week to run 5Ks with me. When winter hits, we skip the icy days and wait for random 60-degree moments. Midwestern weather is chaotic; we take whatever it gives us.

I don’t run to get faster or smaller or better. I don’t run for my ego. I don’t even run for the mini pies — though that certainly helps. I just run.

I run because it secretly brings me joy. Because it connects me to my mom. Because it reminds me of being 14 and stubborn. Because Mid told me to chill out. Because I like the feeling of surprising myself.

Running no longer feels like a test I’m constantly failing. It feels like something I get to do—to be outside, to move, to talk with my mom, to remember who taught me to show up, who taught me that walking is fine, and who taught me that “slow” is still movement.

It feels like reclaiming something my younger self thought she wasn’t good enough for.

And maybe that’s the whole point: not to run fast, but to run in a way that lets me keep coming back.

I run because—apparently—I’m a runner now.

God help me (and my knees).