Today’s Turkey Trot 10K run, which Justin Rudd stages to support his endless list of charitable deeds, is becoming a nice Thanksgiving tradition. But if you don’t feel like running as far with so many people — or considering how someone as handsome as Rudd also got to be such a nice guy – there may still be time for you to join in the shoreline’s established Thanksgiving athletic tradition – the Turkey Flounder.

The Turkey Flounder – a five-mile run capped off by a 100-yard swim (thus, the flounder) — has been part of Thanksgiving morning along the waterfront since 1981 … except for the years when nobody felt like doing it. But that hasn’t happened in a long time. This morning’s Turkey Flounder will be the 16th in a row.

As they have since the mid-1980s, perhaps a dozen people will gather at the Naples Elementary School  morning at 9 a.m. to wonder why, even as they are attaching their laminated numbers. Together they will traipse down to a hard-to-explain-how-to-get-there starting line next to the house of some really understanding people. Soon after that, the race will begin.

The course wanders through Naples to Second Street, goes west through Belmont Shore, angles along Livingston to Ocean Blvd and continues west on the grass of Bluff Park to the turnaround point at Cherry.  The runners go down the road onto Cherry Beach and head back east along the Bike Path. Thanks to Justin Rudd’s burgeoning tradition, hundreds of Turkeys will be Trotting the other way, making what used to the be most-deserted part of the course the most chaotic. At Belmont Pier the course takes a quick but important detail, going out to the end of the pier and back before continuing east to the end of the Bike Path, crossing Ocean and running along Alamitos Bay for perhaps a quarter mile.

Then runners stop, take off their shirts and shoes, tie them to the tops of their heads, and swim across Alamitos Bay to the finish … floundering is not requisite, but recommended.

After a short rest, everybody goes to Sweet Jills for cinnamon rolls.

See you there? If not this year, then next.

Tags: , alamitos bay, justin rudd, Turkey Flounder, turkey trot