Yesterday, I had the honor and the privilege of participating in the 2010 Indy Mini-Marathon with approximately 35,000 of my closest friends. I am happy to say that I finished in the top 10,000. This race really is a pretty remarkable undertaking. It’s billed as the largest half-marathon in the world. The 35,000 spots traditionally fill up well before the race – I think sales closed in December this year; though Thanksgiving isn’t unheard of.
The organization, at least from my ground level perspective, is very well done: not much waiting around, plenty of water, times are posted promptly, lots of entertainment along the course. I guess the route doesn’t go through very appealing scenery, but if one end of the course is downtown Indianapolis, and if the other end of the course is the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, there just isn’t a lot of unblighted territory to run through. I’m honestly not a big fan of running on the track. There are a lot of bottlenecks and I don’t much like running on the banked turns. But, given that the event is part of the 500 festivities, you pretty much have to do it. My understanding is that the Indy Monumental race goes through much nicer territory.
I ran the 13.1 miles in 2:00:45 which is better than I anticipated, but agonizingly short of breaking that two hour mark. The temperature was a nice 50 degrees, but the wind was blowing out of the west at something like 20 miles per hour. That stiff wind made the pre-race wait in the corrals unpleasantly cold, but once we got moving, things weren’t too bad. To make things better, the wind was at our back for almost all of the second half of the race. What was really spurred me along was catching Amy in the crowd with an awesome “Go Doug” sign at two points along the course. (Apparently at least one other “Doug” was happy to see her sign and let her know.) Then, at the very end, my friend John who is much, much faster than me – but who started in a corral further back, caught up and gave me a little tap on the back as he zipped past. That gave me a nice burst for the last 10th of a mile or so as I tried to keep up with him.
Fortunately, I seem to have come out of this race relatively uninjured. Last year, I was taken out of commission for six weeks by some fairly significant tendonitis in my ankle. After taking that much time off, my conditioning had really suffered which, in turn, reduced my motivation. By the time I got back to running in any serious way, I had lost a lot of ground. With some luck, maybe I can build on what I’ve done so far this year – maybe set some personal records in a 5k or 10k in the near future and then hopefully beat two hours in the Lafayette half marathon this fall.
Any desire for a full marathon?
Nice run Doug. If you want a scenic half marathon, the Geist half is an excellent choice. I’ll run that at an agonizingly slow pace in two weeks.
Maybe a little. Before doing that, I’d probably have to see about an intermediate distance – maybe a 25k or 20 miler.
Good Job!! I am not sure I could walk that far in a day now. Too much running and football and other sports in the past have left me with poor knees, bad feet, and now too much fat. At least I can paddle my canoe and carry my gear over the portages–for now :)
I have a hard time seeing how people can run that far that fast. I am envious. But how do we blame the socialist obamites for this? :) :)
Are they running from him?
You would have had a better pre-race wait if Indiana was not on daylight saving time, you know!
Congrats. I finished my first Mini about 19 minutes behind you. My only injury other than general soreness is to my Achilles tendon. I’ve heard those things can be persistent, but hopefully this will fade, too.
This is my first Mini, so I never have had to run on the track on a warm sunny day, which I’ve heard can be brutal. Still, I liked having the track as a nice goal for the midpoint of the race. I didn’t find the banking to be that bad, given that they had us on the slowdown lanes in most of the turns. The only thing I didn’t like about it was the sensation (probably false) that I was tearing up my shoes on the diamond-cut track surface.
Congratulations, John! I’m probably imagining things with the banked turns myself – my ankle tendonitis (not the achilles, but I’m not sure which) started flaring up at the track last year, so right or wrong, that’s where I’ve projected my displeasure for that injury.
My (non-medical) understanding is that tendonitis will generally heal pretty well, but there aren’t any real short cuts, and you have to give it time and not work the affected tendon.