This past Saturday, I ran the Indianapolis Mini-Marathon. I had been training for 12 weeks, and I was so excited to be finished. Prior to starting my training, the furthest I had ever run at once was about six miles. So the prospect of running 13.1 miles wasn't exactly exciting to me. But I started a training program that forced me to build up my running endurance, gradually increasing the distance. There were several times during my training when I doubted whether I could run 13 miles - and that I contemplated quitting. But I stuck with it and managed to feel pretty well-prepared when race day rolled around.Saturday morning, I woke up at 5am and was downtown, lined up for the race by 6:40. By the time it was 7:30, the race began, and 35,000 people started running together. It was such a neat feeling, being surrounded by so many other people running the race. The course also had musicians lined up along it for most of the route, providing entertainment for all the runners. Spectators lined up at different points along the course, cheering us on.
We ran from downtown, out to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, took a 2.5 mile lap around the track, then returned downtown for the finish of the race. When I reached the Speedway - about 6.5 miles and just over an hour into the race - the winners were just crossing the finish line. Kenyans Lamech Mokono and Valentine Orare tied for first place with a time of 1:02.53. That's an average of 4.77 minutes/mile! (For comparison's sake, I ran the race at a pace of 9.11 minutes/mile.)
After the Speedway lap, the race headed back toward downtown. As we got within a couple miles of the finish, I felt surprisingly good. In my training I usually hit a wall with about a mile or two remaining on my long (11-12 miles) runs. The adrenaline of the race-day atmosphere must have affected me in a good way, because I never hit that wall. The last mile of the course was a straight shot, and the sides were lined with people cheering and encouraging all of us in the home stretch of the race. I finished strong through the end and couldn't believe that I had just run 13.1 miles. It went by so much faster than all the other long runs I had done, even though this was the longest one yet. All the activity had made the race very exciting!
After we had turned in our timer chips and chugged a bottle of water, volunteers handed out fruit, gatorade, and other snacks. Photographers took pictures of runners who had finished, and metals were handed out. The whole experience was really neat, besides being a great excuse to get in shape! I'll definitely consider running the Mini again next year. And I'm so used to running all the time now, that after two days of rest since the race, I'm already itching to run again. I don't think I'll run 13 miles on a whim, but 5 or 6 sounds pretty good.
