It’s difficult to believe that the Fountain Hills Turkey Trot will be staged for the 25th time on Thanksgiving morning.
For the record, I did run in one Turkey Trot, but it was a long time ago and, trust me, there was nothing to write home about…
My main accomplishment was that I finished.
I’ve always been more comfortable hanging around the race before and after – without moving far from the finish line, much less trudging five kilometers…
I was at that first Turkey Trot back in 1991, both as a newspaper guy and as chairman of the fledgling Parks and Recreation Commission at the time.
Charlie Fox was a member of the first Town Council that year, and Robin Goodman had just been hired as the town’s first Parks and Recreation Dept. director.
She was the Parks and Recreation Department at the time.
Charlie mentioned to Robin that it would be nice for Fountain Hills to stage a Turkey Trot.
Sure, other cities in Arizona and around the country had been conducting Turkey Trots for years, but this was no small task for a brand new (and tiny) department that was part of a brand new (and tiny) municipality.
We met outside Town Hall at 5 a.m. that Thanksgiving morning to begin setting up for the race. The town’s offices at that time were off Palisades Blvd., where the medical complex is now located.
We didn’t have fancy timing equipment or the wherewithal to hire a race company. It was just a bunch of rag-tag volunteers pulling together to stage a hometown race.
We wanted to make the new town government proud and show that this department meant business in terms of serving the public’s recreation needs.
And my, how the Turkey Trot has grown over the decades…
I performed some heavy-duty research – pulled out the binder containing all 1991 newspapers – and discovered that 101 people officially participated in that first Turkey Trot. A whopping 101!
There were 55 runners and 46 people in the one-mile “fitness” walk that first year.
Long-time resident Ed Zerambo was the very first Fountain Hills Turkey Trot overall winner, clocking a time of 17:25 (I wonder if Ed has been in every Turkey Trot since then? Or how about Dave Beracy?).
Last year’s overall winner was 16-year-old Hayden Shelly, registering a time of 17:02.
And, get this, last year’s Turkey Trot had more than 1,100 participants. That’s a far cry from 101 folks, and obviously a credit to the Town of Fountain Hills and the dedicated employees and volunteers who have kept up this holiday tradition all these years.
I know it’s been tradition for many runners, walkers and families to gather early on Thanksgiving morning to run or walk in our very own Turkey Trot.
Many then hang around to take in another Fountain Hills Thanksgiving tradition – the parade.
