Monument Square in downtown Troy, host city of the Pioneer Troy Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving Day. Photo: UpstateNYer, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Troy opened the countdown to the 79th Pioneer Troy Turkey Trot on Tuesday morning, Nov. 10, at Ryan’s Wake Public House, with Mayor Carmella Mantello calling the Thanksgiving Day races “our biggest signature event.” The Troy Record reported that registration is open for a 5K, a 10K, a Grade School Mile and a Turkey Walk, and that all funds will again support Joseph’s House and Shelter and the Regional Food Bank. Pioneer Bank is the event’s first signature sponsor after 30 years as a sponsor, the paper said.
Mantello estimated more than 7,000 participants and more than 10,000 spectators this year and said she hopes fundraising will top last year’s $40,000. If it does, a third beneficiary, the Salvation Army, will be added, as Unity House was last year when the extra threshold was met. Schuyler Bull, Pioneer’s vice president and director of marketing and communications, told the kickoff crowd the bank “just knew we had to ‘gobble up’ the chance” to become the signature sponsor.
Josh Merlis, founder of the Albany Running Exchange, is event director for a second year. Packet pickup will again be at the East Campus Athletic Village Gymnasium at RPI, 20 Georgian Terrace, a move Merlis said worked well last year. The official schedule lists pickup from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 22, and from 3 to 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 25, with race-day pickup beginning at 6:30 a.m. on Thursday, Nov. 26, at the Troy Atrium. Merlis encouraged runners to pick up packets ahead of race day. New this year on Nov. 22, after pickup, are a talk by coach Emily Taft on how to prepare in the final days, and a group run and shoe demonstration with Fleet Feet, the Record and the official schedule both said.
On Thanksgiving morning, the official schedule puts the 10K start at 8 a.m., the Grade School Mile at 9:30 a.m., the Trot Mile Walk at 9:35 a.m. and the 5K at 10 a.m. A new fundraising contest will let the top two individuals and teams that raise the most money choose someone to join Mantello on the stage to sound the air horns at the start, the Record reported, and the top individual and team will be invited to the charity check presentation and receive free entry next year. Donations of nonperishable food and personal-care items will also be accepted at the race. The official event site dates the trot to 1916 and describes “110 years of tradition.”
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