Kiss My Bricks - Indy Mini Marathon

I just finished the 32nd annual Indy Mini Marathon, the largest mini marathon in the country. The draw of the event, besides its title of largest, is that you get to run an entire loop on the Indy Motor Superspeedway; pretty stellar!

Though there were great fears of poor weather, weather.com nailed it, and the rains had went away come the start time of 7:33AM. According to the bank sign near the start line, the temperature was a nice 61 or so degrees with cloud cover promising to keep it cool for most of the race. If I'm being picky, I would prefer temps about 5 to 10 degrees colder, but it would turn out that's about the only thing I would find to complain about during this excellently executed race. The clouds did clear around my mile 8, and the sun was actually kind of intense, but all in all, it was bearable.

I decided to use the sock the night before the race, and perhaps that was a mistake; my foot was pretty angry at the start line and for the first mile. I tried to slow down, and the foot got more agreeable as I rounded into mile 2. It would end up periodically flaring up into a state of anger, pain, and general angst, but those episodes were pretty limited. By the end, I think the foot just got numb (ahh, the joy on long distance running!).

On the race course, there was copious amounts of music. Actually, most of the time I could hear some kind of band or artist playing. I can't claim that it was always good music (sorry Indy!), but they did do a good job of keeping folks distracted on the course.

The water/gatorade support was outstanding! There were something to the tune of 20 stops on the course, and I never saw any evidence of issues with water or gatorade distribution. Unlike Chicago, Indy clearly used city water from a hose (I saw some hoses in action), so as long as they were stocked with cups, they were in good shape.

The start line corral was equally stellar; the best I've ever been a part of. To efficiently start 35,000 runners, the race had corrals A -> Z, with your corral assigned either by a past result or your claim of how fast you could run. You could either run in your corral or any slower one that you preferred. There were plenty of corrals and it was easy to get into. Chicago's corrals were impossible to get into, and Houston has never had enough corrals to make them work well (though this last year, with a waved start, perhaps they've finally figured it out).

The race track was a neat experience. Almost three miles, complete with water misters at one point, many sets of high school cheerleaders cheering, and the big screen TVs were playing the local TV coverage of the race. When I came to the bricks, the ones racers kiss .... I guess I missed them! I don't remember. We had a discussion of kissing the bricks ("Of course, you have too"), and how to do it ("Tongue? I think you should since this is one of the most well known tracks."), so maybe it worked out for the best that I didn't get any track loving.

I also had a first during this race; I drank beer. Not after the race mind you (well, I did that to), during it. Most races (though usually just marathons) have some unofficial beer on the course (the local Hash House Harriers normally provide it), so I decided at mile 11.5 or so to toss back a very small Dixie cup of some kind of light beer (I'm going to say Bud) when I came up to it. I had always wanted to have some of the race course beer, but have been fearful of stomach problems if I were to do that in the full marathon. At mile 11.5 though, with 2:15 in the bag and 2:10 out of reach, I decided I might as well enjoy.

My total time was 2:11:56, so I managed to come in under my goal of 2:15. Below are my mile splits, and after a decent start (I had aspirations of actually breaking 2:10 for the first four miles), my miles started to suffer a bit. I was proud that even though my miles started to suffer, I didn't have to walk, and didn't throw in a stinker mile to rest; I just kept plodding along as best I could. Lynette and Jon had a good day as well, hitting the board with a nice 1:57, which may be a PR for Lynette. Jon's brother Chris was running as well, and he had a good time with a 1:48.

Finally, many thanks to the volunteers, included my friend from my Auburn days Kara (sorry I didn't see you in the water chute). 4,000 volunteers are needed for the run, and they all did an excellent job!

Mile 1 - 9:39
Mile 2 - 9:13 (I promise, I tried to slow down!)
Mile 3 - 9:45
Mile 4 - 9:22
Mile 5 - 10:17
Mile 6 - 10:01
Mile 7 - 10:09
Mile 8 - 10:13
Mile 9 - 10:35
Mile 10 - 10:34
Mile 11 - 10:18
Mile 12 - 10:37
Mile 13 - 10:26
Mile 13.1 - 0:49