The Forgotten Race and An Unexpected PR

Hey all,

This past weekend I did the Indianapolis Monumental Half Marathon. That's a mouthful.  This is a race that I had signed up for in September when working out my marathon training schedule.  I thought that I could treat it as an easier training run to break up my super long runs.

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Well.... I forgot about it.  I honestly forgot that I had signed up for it, and it totally snuck up on me.  The weekend before, I was looking at my schedule and saw that I had a race coming up.  Now, after my previous half marathon, I was not ready for another one.

I went to work that Friday, picked up my packet after work, and downed some takeout spaghetti and meatballs.  I wasn't making this race into that big of a deal.  "Just a training run," I kept telling myself.  The next morning, I woke up and wasn't nervous.  George dropped me off at the start... still wasn't nervous.  What was going on?  Me, the champion worrier, was cool as a cucumber.

The weather was great, around 39 degrees with little wind.  The course was flat, and I was very familiar with where we were going.  I was happy to get started and started running with my aunt.  We kept telling each other to go easy and have fun. There was so much music and crowd support, so the miles went by really quickly.

I can't believe I'm posting this.  Taking terrible pictures should be listed under "special skills" on my resume.

At around mile 7, I got passed by a guy juggling.  His whole "thing" is that he was going to run the entire half marathon while juggling three balls.  That may have made a tiny dent on my ego.  At that point, I had eaten my applesauce and I was feeling good.  I was ready to kick it up a little bit at eight miles.  It wasn't until about ten that I realized I had a chance to PR.

This was the first half that I've done where I didn't stop to walk at all!  I think it is because I did a better job pacing myself for the first portion.  As I turned the corner to sprint to the finish, I saw that I actually did PR!  I ended up doing 2:11:01.

Now, before you get too congratulatory, it's only a PR of 1 minute and 11 seconds, but a PR nonetheless.  One of the best parts was seeing all of my ER nurse friends at the finish line that were working the medical tent.  I was so relaxed for the entire race, which made it so much fun to run.  I didn't listen to any music and didn't miss it.  There was too much other stuff going on.

Why yes, I do enjoy dressing like a cat burglar for races

If you ever have the chance to do this race, I would tell you to jump at it.  The course is SO flat, and the weather this year was perfect.  The course support was awesome, and everything was done flawlessly.

Next up, the first of two 20 milers this weekend.  Wish me and my tired haunches luck.  This has potential to get ugly.