Thanksgiving races: Help others as well as yourself

My love for holidays has never extended to Thanksgiving.

I am not sure why. Maybe it's living so far from most of my parents and siblings for most of my adult life. Maybe it's because eating, sleeping and watching football just doesn't seem very festive to me. And, in all honesty, stuffing myself has never seemed a very good way to show my gratitude — and I am much better at that than I am at cooking.

For many years I found ways to avoid celebrating a holiday meant to focus on our blessings. I worked. I volunteered. I spent many uncomfortable hours at the homes of others. I also wasted way too many of those days.

A few years ago I started making two Thanksgiving meals, one for my family and one for the hungry downtown. After a while, however, it seemed there were more people like me on Thanksgiving morning than there were hungry and homeless. It seemed almost a hollow gesture to head down to help one day a year — and the same day apparently that everyone else was motivated to lend a hand.

Then last year my colleague, Jody Genessy, told me he was going to run a 5K aimed at raising money for the Utah Food Bank. Jody, my sister and I ran the race — in the drizzling rain — and honestly, it was amazing.

Not only did I feel good about donating some cans of food and part of my entry fee, but I actually felt uplifted physically. My sister and I committed to do something similar this year. And while there are quite a few options all along the Wasatch Front for fundraising and exercise on Thanksgiving morning, one stands out — the Utah Human Race.

Phil and Heather Goold began the race four years ago after running in a similar 5K in their hometown of Sacramento about six years ago.

"It was a lot of fun," he said. "It was a mass of humanity, something like 24,000 runners, and it made, like, $500,000 for the local food bank. I thought, 'What a good idea.' "

And while he savored that experience, he wasn't moved to action until he attended a church meeting quite a bit later. The speaker was the president of the LDS Humanitarian Services, and what he learned was just how many ways there are to help.

Finally, on a run with a friend, he announced what he'd been feeling since that church meeting.

"I said, 'We have to do this,' " Goold recalled.