Thoughts on the "Mini"

Back in October or November my friend Suzanne and I were talking and she said she was thinking about doing the Indy Mini Marathon. I responded with "That sounds cool, maybe I'll do it too." She said "You can't do it, you smoke" and a challenge was born. I told her I was signing up that day and she better sign up too. I then called my sister. The call was eerily similar to the one I made in 2001 where I said "Guess what, we are going skydiving." Only this time it was "Guess what, we are running a half marathon in May." In all 5 of us signed up together, me, Suzanne, her boyfriend Calvin, April and April's roommate Nicole. Nicole being the only one of us with running experience.

So here I am, a 37 year old guy that really likes his beer and has a pack and a half to two pack a day habit and I just signed up to run 13.1 miles, what the hell was I thinking. So I started running on a treadmill at the hotel when I could. At the beginning it was 2 or 3 miles 2 or 3 times a week. I was doing pretty good with it in the beginning, but as winter wore on my training time kept getting cut. Some weeks I'd run 2 or 3 times, other weeks I wouldn't run at all. It was never over 5 miles (only hit the 5 mile mark twice I think) and it was always indoors on a treadmill. Low and behold the calendar changed to May and I still hadn't run over 5 miles and hadn't run outside at all. I don't know this for sure, but I heard they started a pool at work as to which mile I was going to drop dead at.

The night before the race I meet up with April and Nicole at our friend Chris' house since he was closer to Indy. We pinned our numbers on our shirts and Nicole gave us some last minute pointers. She also gave us some "energy beans" to use during the race. Not sure if they actually helped, but it tricked my mind into thinking they did. Nicole proved to be invaluable as far as answering questions and giving us pointers.

So we get up at 430am on race day to be downtown by 6ish. The day dawned cloudy, cold and WINDY. That did nothing to help my already shaky confidence, but too late to back out now. We met up with Suzanne and Calvin and posed for prerace pictures with everybody, got in our designated starting corral and waited. I had no idea what 35,000 people looked like all on the street. We stretched for several city blocks in both directions from where we started. We started in the area with an estimated finishing time of 2hrs 40min, which at this point sounded painfully optimistic.

The gun goes off and we are on our way. Took us about a half an hour to reach the actual starting line. We all wore an individual timing device so our time didn't actually start until we reached the starting line. The first few miles weren't too bad. It was a lot of weaving in and out of traffic to try to maintain the pace we wanted. I was able to hang with the other 4 until a little past mile 4. At that point I got boxed in behind some slower people and by the time I found a hole to get around them, the other 4 were pulling away from me. I decided it was going to take too much out of me to try to catch up to them so I settled in to my own pace.

At about the 5 and a half mile mark we entered the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. That was the coolest part of the whole race, well except we entered through the tunnel under the short chute on turns one and two. That ends up being quite a steep hill to come up. At this point, I leaned on my Sarah Fisher shirt that I was wearing for inspiration. I think they should have had Milka Duno out turning laps in her Indy Car so she would finally know what if felt like to pass somebody at Indy during competition. I've been to the Speedway on numerous occasions and even took the bus tour around it once. You really don't get a feel for just how long the track is until you are on foot, come out of turn two and see just how far you have to run to get to turn three. I'm just glad the wind wasn't blowing down the straightaways, thankfully it was only in our face through three and four.

We exited the track through the "Brickyard Crossing" gate out of turn two, and this is the first place I allowed myself to walk. I walked from there (about mile 8.5) to the water area just short of mile 9. From there on in it was a struggle. My foot started to hurt about mile 10 and I walked a few different times from there on in. I'm guessing all in all I probably walked a mile of the whole race. It was pretty cool coming down the home stretch. Lots of spectators cheering us on. We had our names on our bib numbers and people would actually encourage you by name. That was really awesome.

The official count was 31,020 finishers, with an average time of 2:28:12 and the actual winner ran it in 1:02. Nicole was the winner in our group at 2:30:02, good for 18,673rd place. April was a close 2nd at the same 2:30:02 but in 18,675th place. Suzanne and Calvin were next with 2:30:24 and 2:30:25 respectively, good for 18,772 and 18,774. As for me, I crossed the line in 2:42:15, which was 21,177th place. When the race started I told my self I'd be happy if I stayed off the bus and finished the race, with a loose goal of 3 hrs. I was ecstatic with 2:42. That was right on the pace we had decided on way back in October when we signed up, and with my severe lack of training time I couldn't be happier.

All in all it was a great experience. Would I do it again? I hate to use the word "never" because never is a long time. Yesterday I would have said no way, but today, as the soreness is going away I can't help but think how much better my time would be if I actually had time to train right for it. So I'll leave the door open a crack, but I don't think it's going to be one of my priorities.

The one thing that made it really extra special for me was having my sister do it with me (even though she ditched me at mile 4 :-) ) This was the 2nd big life experience I've gotten to do with her and I'm really happy we have been able to share these with each other. If it wasn't for her I'm not sure I would be skydiving or would have been able to complete this half marathon. Part of it is our competitive nature where as if she can do it, I can do it, but it runs a lot deeper than that. It is really cool to be able to share these life changing experiences with her, and I'm very thankful that we have the kind of relationship that we can do these things together. It makes them extra special, although I'm sure we've scared the hell out of mom a few times.