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American excess is manifested no more perfectly than it is on Thanksgiving Day. A slow-roasted, 22-pound bird is slaughtered, slathered in gravy, covered with mashed potatoes and then wrapped in a beautiful blanket of green bean casserole, sweet potato pie and stuffing. The average Thanksgiving dinner feast contains over 4,500 calories, two days worth of calorie intake.
In recent years, though, Americans have become more obsessed with fitness on Turkey Day. No, I’m not talking about “fitness entire pan of stuffing into my body,” I’m talking about actual strenuous physical activity. The only 10K I’m thinking about on Thanksgiving are the 10,000 calories I’m trying to consume from turkey trimmings to pumpkin pie.
From The Wall Street Journal:
More running races are held on Thanksgiving Day than any other day of the year, according to Athlinks, an aggregator of athletic-event data. About 870,000 people ran in a turkey-day race in 2013, according to industry tracker Running USA. That’s a 770% increase from the 100,000 who ran in races on the day five years earlier.
Dammit, America. What the hell is this? A 770% increase in Thanksgiving Day races? The only 770 percent increase that happens for me on turkey day is my cholesterol. Thomas Jefferson didn’t defeat the Nazis at Helm’s Deep so you could go run in the 5/10K Turkey Trot at 6 a.m. on your day off. Thanksgiving is for gluttony. The only running I want anything to do with this November 27 is juice from a girthy turkey leg running down my chin and into my patchy chest hairs.
I guess running in a fun run at the asscrack of dawn is a way of saying “thanks” for having two functioning legs, although I think the best way to give thanks for working limbs is by taking up an entire couch by yourself while watching football after stuffing yourself full of carbs, dark meat, fat and sugar for three hours.
That’s the only kind of marathon I want to be doing on Thanksgiving..
[via WSJ]
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Brian McGannon
What do I love? I love happy hour, a good golf tan, and getting moderately drunk during dinner.
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brianmcgannon
The only fitness I worry about on Thanksgiving is fitness turkey in my stomach AMIRITE?!
This seems so dangerous. If I were to ever run a 10k before thanksgiving I would use that as an excuse to cram even more food than usual into every orifice.
If you regularly cram food into orifices other than your mouth, running a race isn’t the real source of danger, here.
I don’t think you take thanksgiving as seriously as you should JD
Its only because people are suckers for the alliteration opportunities of a thanksgiving turkey trot
To hell with that. Eating 2 pounds of turkey then fighting the tryptophan to stay awake is more challenging, anyways.
Well done, Brian.
Leave it to the fat guy to post this.
The fitness I worry about on Thanksgiving is fitness ass into the loosest pair of pants I own so there are no unnecessary barriers to shoveling it in.