Oceanside CA— The O’side Turkey returned to the Oceanside streets Thanksgiving morning after a virtual race in 2020 due to Covid restrictions.  Chris Wernke (26:23/5:17mi) of Vista and Karla Khalifa (31:17/ 6:45:57mi) of San Diego took the top spots in the first event of the morning, the 5 mile run.

Multi-time O’side Turkey Trot winner and fresh off a title in the Masters Division of the Cross Country Championships, Okwaro Raura, led the event most of the way followed closely by Dmitriy Major of Carlsbad and Chris Wernke. At around mile 3, Wernke made his move. “I started out conservative, which was my game plan. I knew there were some downhills I could take advantage of so I just kept the leaders in sight,” said Wernke. ” I made my move around mile 3 and caught up to and passed Okwaro around mile 4. It’s the first time I have won this race so I am happy.” Wernke has been running the event since 2017.  “This guy was greater than me today,” said Raura. “He is a great athlete and the rest of the people that were pushing are also  great athletes. It could have been anybody’s race today but Chris timed it really well.” This was the first race in 7 events, this year, that Raura didn’t finish first and his first event back after coming down with a cold that kept him from training this past week. “Having a cold and all that, hey, it’s part of competition and you can’t expect to be perfect every time. I finished behind a great guy.”

For Karla Khalifa, it was the first time running in the event. “Great course. Great weather,” said Khalifa before heading back to the start line for the 5k. “I had a great run. I felt pretty steady. I had a really great lead biker with me who had some encouraging words for me and kept me steady. The lead biker for the womens leader was Scott Endsley, a six time National Triathalon champion. “We had some nice back and forth conversation,” said Endsley. ” She didn’t know the course so I was telling her things like there is a 20 yard uphill ahead or a 200 yard straight coming up. It is nice when you are running at that pace and it hurts, it helps. She ran a steady pace and her heart rate was really steady the whole time.”

For the 5k, Trevor Boaz  of San Diego(15:09) and Alexia Thiros from Gunnison CO (17:02) were the victors in the men’s and women’s fields respectively. Full results for each age group and event are available to view here.
More than 8,000 participants came together to ‘move their feet before they eat®’ for the sixteenth edition of San Diego County’s most popular Thanksgiving Day fitness event. The O’Side Turkey Trot benefits over 90 local charities and Oceanside schools, and this year’s funds raised are estimated to exceed $40,000.
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