Violet Sky

After we moved to Vancouver, Washington in 2010, we made a point of going back to our home town of San Jose, California as often as we could. When I picked up running in 2016, and actually stuck with it for the first time, I naturally wanted to run a turkey trot in my home town during our yearly Thanksgiving trip.

The Applied Materials Silicon Valley Turkey Trot (what a mouthful) is a large event set in downtown San Jose, with typically upward of 20,000 runners every year. The course is flat, the weather is usually beautiful, and if you’re my husband, there are a few taco shops open on Thanksgiving Day specifically to take advantage of the runners and their entourages during this event. It’s a great time.

COVID, of course, cancelled this event in 2020, and they offered a virtual option, which we took. Our several-times-a-year trips to San Jose have dwindled to maybe once a year, as we can now afford other travel, so my husband and I have been running the virtual event since 2020.

Provided you sign up within their shipping window, virtual entry into the race includes the same tech shirts and bibs they would give out at packet pickup, plus a “virtual expo” that is functionally just a bunch of ads and online storefronts for various sponsors. The latter is skippable. You are required to track your race via the RaceJoy app, which has been a source of immense frustration for me for the last several years – it’s typically buggy and inconsistently notifies you of your progress. This year, however, they seem to have really improved their QA process, as the tracking and notifications went off without a hitch.

The weather in southwest Washington is always a crapshoot at in November, but this year it was clear and cold. We decided on an out-and-back route down a parkway with an excellent separated walking/biking trail and a limited number of stop lights – coincidentally one of our training run routes for longer runs. This year, we ran the 10k, and had an uneventful run, with very few bikers on the trail and no other runners that I can remember. You’d think getting a nice run in before the big eating event would be more popular. 😛

Since we don’t bother pausing the event timer at stop lights, we ended up with an easy run at around a 10:40 pace including time standing around at stop lights. The RaceJoy app sends out notifications for every mile, as you’d expect, though the announcement gets longer and longer as it additionally reads out the lap pace and overall average pace. It doesn’t pause your music while it does this, which also makes it challenging to hear the times, depending on what you’re listening to.

While I probably won’t do another virtual race report here again (local woman runs in her city! how thrilling), I will absolutely continue to run this virtual turkey trot. Partially to keep the streak of running it alive (8 years and counting!), but also because I really like kicking off a busy, food-heavy day with a nice run that I don’t have to get up early to attend. See you next year, Applied Materials Silicon Valley Turkey Trot (phew)!