Indianapolis 500 33rd Annual Mini Marathon

Today (May 2) was the 33rd annual Indianapolis Mini Marathon. It's the largest 1/2 marathon (13.1 miles) in the country with 35,000 participants, both runners and walkers. For the past couple of months I have been training to run it.

I ran with one of my friends from start to finish. From mile 6 to around mile 8-1/2, you actually get to run AROUND the Indianapolis 500 race track. As appealing as that sounds, it's brutal! LOL! It's 2-1/2 miles of the same thing so needless to say, I had a couple of times I was doubtful I could run the rest of the race. I broke through the wall though and kept going.
Once we got off the track, I felt better. We passed our time listening to our iPods or talking or sharing pointless stories to just be talking and getting our minds off the run. The funny thing is, after awhile, your brain just shuts down and you can't really think very well. We kept trying to calculate our time to see how fast we were going per mile and eventually we couldn't calculate it any longer because it got too difficult. LOL!

Finally, we hit 10 miles...11 miles...12 miles. Once we hit 12 miles, only one more mile, right? Well, let me tell you, it's probaby the hardest mile of them all. Your brain is telling you to stop. I mean, I had only ran 12 miles in training...never 13! During the whole last mile, I kept praying and thinking, "how am I going to get through this last mile?". But the last 15 feet, I took off and sprinted! I had crossed the finish line. All I could say over and over again is, "I'm just so glad it's over! I'm just so glad it's over!". I also vowed never to do it again and to only do the 5K next year. You see, this is my 3rd year doing it and every year I say I'll never do it again and here I am....doing it AGAIN! But this time, I mean it! I'm sticking to 5K's!
My race time was 2 hrs 24 min (my personal best).

- Rana