Grand Junction makes a Turkey Trot Tradition

From year to year, the holiday season is ripe with traditions that may vary from one family to the next. Your knitted sweater may fit a little more snug than it once did, and your wine-savvy aunt has switched from boxed to bottled, but the adoption of new traditions doesn’t stop there for residents of Colorado’s Western Slope.

This year marks the seventh annual hosting of the Turkey Trot 5k in Grand Junction, Colo. Before donning the elastic waistbands for festive meals, over 1,200 runners and walkers took to the streets of downtown Grand Junction on the morning of Thanksgiving.

“It’s kind of a funny thing, because a lot of people now have replaced big events, like the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, with running at our race,” said Mandy Harter, the head event coordinator for the Turkey Trot. “This race started with good intention amongst a small group of people, and I’m happy to see it grow from year to year.”

Even in it’s infancy, this festive 5k began with purpose. The event benefits the Grand Junction Firefighters Foundation.

“This is a great way for our guys at the station to get out into the city in a very different way,” said Stacey Foster. As a wife of one of the firefighters in station 2808, Foster says that her husband gains inspiration for his work from being able to interact with the people he protects.

On some of the busiest streets of Grand Junction on any normal day, the Turkey Trot transforms the downtown area into a spirited five kilometers of cardio.

“Next week I’ll run the Winter Sun Run in Moab, Utah so this is my daily workout and a tempo run,” said Sam Van Pelt. “Every year I run this race with my brothers with a competitive attitude, and I always forget how many smiling faces and happy families come out despite the cold.”

Some come in costume, some with personal records in mind, but everyone comes and contributes to the solidification of a new tradition. 

Find the Grand Junction Turkey Trot on Facebook

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Bleachers to Bruises: Rugby fan joins CSU Club Team

With fair skin and a likeness for wearing dresses when the weather permits, McKenzie Kimball is getting accustomed to showing a couple bruises as a rookie on the Women’s Rugby team at Colorado State University. After years of adoration for the sport of rugby, the Natural Resource Recreation and Tourism senior has traded her fandom for a team jersey.

Growing up, Kimball spent her childhood in Silverthorne, Colo. and her adolescence in Fruita, Colo. With a small town upbringing on either side of the state, her interests were shaped by her surroundings. In Fruita, like many other regions of the United States, rugby is a lesser known sport alongside football and soccer. Her first exposure to rugby took place in Silverthorne, but it wasn’t until her collegiate career that Kimball would don a pair of rugby cleats all her own.

During her first year at CSU, Kimball walked out of the rugby interest meeting in a fit of intimidation. Two years would pass before she deeply considered joining the team.

“It’s the sport that tough girls play, and one that people have respect for but its always on the outskirts,” Kimball says of rugby. Though she was content with her involvement on campus, and with her academics, Kimball says she entered her third year at CSU “ready for something that really scares me and pushes me out of my comfort zone.”

Seated in an office chair, the rugby newcomer can’t help but to look approachable as she hugs her right knee to her chest and swings her left leg rhythmically. It seems like a misplacement to imagine Kimball with her pixie-cut, blonde hair out on a field, where physicality has few limitations. She admits that she had her reservations, as well.

Up until her first game, a scrimmage against the University of Wyoming on the CSU intramural fields, Kimball can’t recall having any “physical responses to stress”.

“I fell silent about an hour before the game,” Kimball says. “Typically, I’m reserved before games and the like, but I was thinking ‘shit what did I get into?’”   

After about 60 ‘scrums’—where teams vie for possession of the ball by pushing against their opponents in a head-to-head huddle—her mentality began to change.

Like a mass of humming bees from flower to flower, the two opposing teams are in constant motion whether the ball is or not. As a forward on the team, Kimball is continuously at the center of the swarm with a few specialized roles. If she’s not following allowing with the referee’s cadence of, “crouch, bind, set” to dig her cleats into the ground towards the ball in a scrum, Kimball is helping lift the jumper in the air in a lineout to catch the ball.

“I was surprised that I could actually lift and tackle girls,” Kimball says between giggling. But the surprises didn’t stop there.

Aside from her ability and budding love for the sport, Kimball was equally surprised by the amount of camaraderie within the women’s rugby team.

“There aren’t very many of us, which is part of this sport,” says Kimball. “It’s a family. They want to know about you and support you like a family does”.

Nov. 3, signified the end of the fall rugby season for the CSU club team, with a loss to the University of New Mexico. With a record of one win and two losses, the team looks forward to a spring season that will begin again in the New Year. As the snow makes its last flurries for the winter, the women on CSU’s rugby team will play one last game against Air Force Academy, and begin preparing for regionals and nationals according to their season performance.

“I don’t really have much opportunity to rest, or to think about stuff which is kind of good because it forces me into a rhythm,” Kimball says with an intonation that suggests she’s realizing more about herself as she finishes her sentence.

“Leaving my first game, I was exhausted. It was really fun, it was terrifying, it was brutal, and it definitely made me fall in love with the sport”.

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Desert's Edge Triathlon

Nearly on the border of the dry and barren border between Colorado and Utah, is a town called Loma, Colo. A town enveloped in a wingspan of mountains, the Colorado National Monument looms in the south, The Mesa stands tall to the east, and The Bookcliffs complete the haphazard circle on the northern stretch of the area.

An outdoor haven, indubitably, this area of Colorado is the home of many natural arenas that have become the setting for races of all kind. On Oct. 6^th, 2013, Highline State Park in Loma served as the hub for the Desert’s Edge Triathlon.

As I scraped ice from my windshield at 7:15 a.m., I began making plans for an extended warm-up run for the race that began at 9:00 a.m. Bike racks, wet suits, and plenty of water stations gave heed to the race taking place.

Being part of a relay team, and the last leg of my relay at that, I watched as anxious athletes began their quirky, muscle loosening routines. Their breath left their bodies like steam leaves your mug of coffee—slowly and lingering.

Despite the chilling temperatures, athletes took to the course with personal records in mind. The top male finisher in the Olympic triathlon, John O’Neill from Edwards, Colo., finished in 1:59:54 minutes. The top female finisher, Heather Gollnick from Steamboat Springs, Colo., finished in 2:24:22 minutes.

Due to the ice bath that was Highline Lake, the swimmer on the relay I was a part of forfeit during his race. We finished the triathlon with an added penalty, but without the competitive adrenaline pulsating through our veins.

A ‘Did Not Finish’ (DNF) alongside our team name serves as my fuel for continual and intensive training.

Happy Trails. 

Here's a look at the tri course compiled by the race officials:

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