Unless you personally competed in the NCAA championships or the Philadelphia Marathon, tomorrow is a big, big day.

It’s the goddamn Turkey Trot. An American tradition like no other. Your chance to dispatch with foes from the road racing circuit both domestic and foreign, old and new, real and imaginary. This is your Super Bowl. Play your cards right and you’ll not only earn bragging rights at run club for the next calendar year…. You’ll also return home with a medal you can smugly wear during Thanksgiving dinner, and 20% off your next pair of shoes at the local running store.

But it won’t come easy: you need to be prepared for the WAR to come. Here are the adversaries you’ll face tomorrow morning, and how you pull off the victory against every one of them.

The Local High School Star

Your first challenge comes in the form of an athlete who could be half your age. They are eager, spry, and haven’t yet been beaten down by a decade of persistent plantar fasciitis. They finished just outside the bubble to qualify for NXN. But they are also running on fumes. They have raced nine dual meets, four invitationals, and five increasingly important championships over the past three months. You, on the other hand, are peaking for this moment. You’re an adult. You vote. The jump up in distance from 5k to 5 miles is going to be this kid’s undoing. You know that a battle of the fast-twitch muscles will not break your way, so you burn the jets two miles from the finish to open up a demoralizing gap. You will have the penultimate laugh when you sweatily break the tape – then they will have the last laugh when you collapse on the pavement and vomit from overexertion.

The Dejected Collegian

Your next challenge comes in the form of a heartbroken 21-year-old back home from college. A few years back, they were the Local High School Star. Now, they are wallowing away as the 9th runner for a nationally-competitive NCAA program. While the varsity seven was yucking it up in Madison, this runner was back on campus thinking about what could have been. On paper, they should mop the floor with you. But Turkey Trots aren’t run on paper. On the starting line alone, dozens of folks have asked them “why didn’t you race at Nationals?” And crucially, their social calendar has been full of frat parties and high school reunions at the local bar since their season ended. Their skin looks greenish and you can smell the bottom-shelf whiskey emanating from their pores. You will get in their head by asking “is your coach having you do this as a tempo?” (Their coach explicitly forbade everyone on the team from racing their turkey trot.) Then you will leave them in your dust with a hot first mile. (They are going to drop out, walk back to the car, and google “transfer portal.”)

The Age Group Hero

It’s not just the young guns who elbow their way to the front of the Turkey Trot starting line. Unless this is your first rodeo, you know that among the most lethal archetypes you’ll encounter up there is the Age Group Hero – the laser-focused 40-something with weirdly defined arm muscles and an uneven stride who is nevertheless capable of sustaining all-out pace for seemingly any distance. They are rumored to have been “pro in the triathlon” at some point in the early 2000s. They are wearing spotless AlphaFlys they definitely bought for this race. They have STRONG opinions about the new BQ standards. But damn. They are not dropping… no matter how many surges you throw at them. It’s time to put pride aside – you’ve got to win this race the dirty way. You drop into their shadow as they stomp and grimace through the final mile, marking every move like a cyclist in the French Alps. With 400m to go… TURN ON THE JETS, BABY. To the Age Group Hero, this is a dishonorable way to race. But to you? They aren’t handing out trophies with little turkeys on them for honor.

Your Old High School Rival

You know this runner as well as you know yourself. You’ve raced dozens of times over the years and your lifetime record is damn near even. There is nothing they can do to surprise you. You know their every move. To spectators who watch you two zoom past, it’ll look like a piece of performance art, you’re so alike in mind and body. Near the three-mile mark, the world outside the start and finish lines starts to disappear. It doesn’t matter that you’ve got a mortgage or that his wife has a baby on the way. In that moment, you’ve transcended time and space and you’re both sixteen again, with your whole lives ahead of you. Your Haglund’s deformity disappears and his hairline creeps back down toward his eyebrows as you unleash a pair of all-too-familiar finishing kicks in perfect sync. True dominance in your decades-long battle will be determined by this photo finish – except, wait, this race is hand-timed by a local retiree and no one has any idea who really won. A fitting end.

No matter who faces you on the starting line, your truest rival is your own inner demons. The only way to conquer them is by measuring your self-worth with a slightly-above-mediocre performance that everyone but you will forget entirely by December 1st. So good luck, and make sure to charge your watch tonight.

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