Tuesday, June 1, 2010

An Update...Finally

Yes, for the one or two people still checking on this blog, I'm finally going to post an update after two months.

Quick catch up. Back on May 8th, I finished the Indianapolis Mini-Marathon. Going into it, I knew it was going to be chilly. The temperatures dropped from the mid-80s and humid Friday, to the high 40s and gusty winds by Saturday morning.

After a stop for coffee at McDonalds, saline solution for my contacts and gas at Meijers (my contact storage thing tipped over and all the solution leaked out in the five hours they were out of my eyes. There was a slight panic that I would be racing in my glasses but thankfully, the contacts went in without any problem), I arrived in downtown Indy.

After making about four passes by a good parking garage, I finally got into it. Parked, ate my poptarts, finished the coffee, and headed out to find the bathrooms. I love Indy for many reasons - one is the walkways connecting the downtown buildings so you barely have to venture outside. The other reason is that I am able to find little known bathrooms and they are open at the wee hours of the morning with very little waiting. The port-o-potty waits weren't too bad either. I guess four stops is the charm - ha!

I got into Coral E with about 5 minutes to spare before they closed and then spent the next 20 minutes with several thousand of my running buddies shivering as the wind gusted from the west straight into us. I think everyone was thinking the same thing - the wind is going to suck.

Surprisingly, it didn't. Once we got started the wind either died down or I didn't really notice it for most of the race.

My first mile, though, surprised me. I finished in 9:45 - way off pace, but wisely, slow. After that, I picked it up. Around mile 4 or 5, someone said my name and in the sea of 40,000 runners, it was a lady from our church. She was hoping to hold 8:30/min miles while I just wanted to break 1:55 so I decided to try to keep up with her. By that time, too, I had increased my pace considerably from the first mile.

We would get split up every so often and then work our way back to each other. We both do a lot of running by ourselves so there wasn't a whole lot of conversation - we just weren't used to it.

She definitely pushed me as I started struggling to keep up with her around mile 10. By mile 11, I had gotten further behind her during a water stop. The next mile, I just worked on picking people off and catching up to her.

With about a mile left to go, you make your final turn, go over a bridge and you can start seeing the finish line. I caught up to here and got a second wind - I think it was the Gatorade hitting or may the Gu I took at mile 11. We ran together until about 1/4 of a mile from the finish line. I was ready to hightail it in and she was close to empty. She told me to go ahead so I took off - she wasn't far behind. I crossed the line in 1:53:29. I placed 205/2461 in my age group, 1387/16598 in females, and overall 5942 out of 31,044. I took 2 minutes off my time.

So with the mini completed, it was on to the next challenge - Tour de Max, the bike ride that I am in my 4th (and possibly final year of) organizing. We were way ahead on registrants and the day turned out to be the best bike riding weather you could ask for. We ended up having 210 riders which is fantastic considering in previous years, we topped off at maybe 150.

I haven't been running since the mini, which is going on four weeks. Honestly, I just haven't made time. I've been working my day job, plus editing in the evenings. I have been teaching the spinning class on Mondays, which is good. I just have to get myself up early to run.

I haven't signed up for a fall marathon either, yet. While I would love to run Chicago, I can't muster up the energy to run for Team in Training. It looks like I'm going to be a broken record again, but I really enjoy the Grand Rapids Marathon - it is inexpensive, pretty, good running, close to home, etc. Maybe next year, I'll be a little more adventurous and find a new marathon to conquer.

So, that gets me all caught up.

I will try to continue updating, Thanks for checking back periodically. Happy running!

3 comments:

Kelly said...

Welcome back, kinda! Good to hear how the mini went. Congrats on all the entrants in the bike race!

Mom on the Run said...

Thanks Kelly! Glad to see you are sticking with it. Love the headband!

Regina said...

Yeah! There you are. Congrats on the race. Just getting out there is half the battle. I wear glasses and contacts too. I actually run in my glasses more often. I'm so sick of contacts after 20+years of wearing them.