Thanksgiving Morning Run Permit Office Opens Registration, Joggers Weep Openly

TULSA, Okla. — The Turkey Trot Permitting Bureau opened registration for this year’s Thanksgiving morning runs at 7:00 a.m. Monday, and by 7:15 a.m. the line of registrants stretched around the block, many of them openly weeping.

The Bureau, which licenses all organized turkey trots in the tri-county area, requires each runner to hold a valid Trot Permit (Form TT-1), sign a waiver acknowledging that “running before pie is a choice,” and complete what the Bureau calls “the honesty questionnaire” — five questions designed to determine whether the runner actually enjoys running or is “processing something.”

“Question three is ‘Describe your relationship with running in one word,'” said Bureau Director Angela Frost, 49, a former marathoner who now watches others run with the serene detachment of a retired general. “If the answer is ‘complicated,’ we fast-track the permit. Those are our people.”

This year’s trot introduces a new “pie-division” category for runners who openly admit they are running “to earn the pie,” a designation Frost called “the most honest division in sports.” Pie-division runners receive a special bib, a head start of zero seconds, and “the respect of everyone who has ever eaten a fourth slice.”

The Bureau also regulates trot costumes, a contentious area. Approved: turkey hats, pilgrim bonnets, and “anything with feathers that doesn’t impede the runner behind you.” Banned: full-body turkey suits (“a visibility hazard and, frankly, a dignity hazard”), inflatable costumes (“the 2023 inflatable incident”), and anything with a working gobble call (“it startles the actual turkeys, and we have received letters”).

Particularly strict are the rules for the ” competitive division,” where runners race for prizes including a frozen turkey, a pie, and “the coveted Golden Drumstick trophy, which is exactly what it sounds like.” Last year’s champion finished the 5K in 16:42, then ate three slices of pie at the finish line festival, “which the Bureau recognizes as the true victory.”

Frost defended the pre-pie run tradition against critics who call it “exercise theater.” “It’s not about the calories,” she said. “Nobody burns off Thanksgiving. It’s about the story. You run, you suffer beautifully, and then you eat pie with the moral authority of someone who has suffered. That pie tastes different. Science can’t explain it. We don’t try.”

Registration closes November 20, or when the Bureau runs out of safety pins, “whichever comes first, and it’s always the safety pins.”

The Golden Drumstick trophy, now in its 12th year, has its own display case at the Bureau’s office, alongside what Frost called “the wall of lost safety pins” — a memorial to registrations past. “Every pin tells a story,” she said. “Mostly the story is I forgot my bib number.” The Bureau’s lost-and-found, opened each year after the trot, typically contains 40 gloves, 12 hats, one wedding ring (claimed), and “a single running shoe, every year, always just one, and we have stopped asking questions.”