On Saturday October 18, I ran in the 13th Annual Indianapolis Half Marathon at Lawrence. This was my second Half Marathon; the first was the Martian Half in Dearborn, MI on April 6, where I finished with an official (chip) time of 2:49:09. At the time when I ran the Martian, it had only been about 4 months since my first run ever. Since then, I have developed a wonderful network of supportive runner friends, put in a bit over 400 training miles, and have lost about 50 lbs. I went into this race expecting a PR, and I would be happy with nothing less than a 30 minute PR.
Short Version: A chilly start, but an overall gorgeous day. A fairly flat course, with one killer hill around mile 11. Overall finish (chip): 2:06:11.9, a PR by 42:58.
Holy Crap This is Long Version: I went into my first Half in April severely undertrained and underequipped, and ended up paying the price, with a poor finish time and severe blisters on both feet. After spending the summer building a training base, and getting some proper running shoes, I felt much better trained for this race. I didn’t follow a structured training plan (Higdon, for example), but slowly built my base to a long run of 13.1 miles, and weekly totals between 15 and 27 miles. I ended up with an unintentional 2 week taper because of a change in jobs and shifts, but in the end I feel as though I was properly trained by the time race day rolled around.
I headed to Indianapolis on Friday afternoon with two of my good friends. More so than the other races I’ve participated in, the race director for this race stressed the importance of picking up packets the day before the race, rather than waiting until the morning of. According to an email I just received, there were approximately 5,800 participants in the half and full marathons; not the biggest race I’ve heard of, but no minor event for the small city of Lawrence, IN either. We left work early and made the approximately 5 hour trip, arriving at the Expo around 6:00 pm after checking in to our hotel. The expo was modest, and the racewear was nice, but I didn’t end up buying anything. We picked up our packets, and decided to drive the course since it was still daylight out. Note to self: driving the course was a good idea, I’d definitely recommend it if you have the opportunity. The race website advertised the course as being flat, but in making the drive between our hotel and the Expo, there wasn’t a flat area in sight! As it turns out, the area of the course was fairly flat from what we could see, with a few rolling hills along the way. There were a couple of parts of the course that we couldn’t access by car, as they traversed into Fort Benjamin Harrison State Park.
After driving the course and grabbing some dinner it was back to the hotel room for bed. After laying out my race clothes, we were in bed by about 9:15, and I was out well before 10. We were kept awake for a while by some kids who were running up and down the halls of the hotel. One of the friends I had traveled with said she was going to go out and ask the kids to quiet down, before her husband reminded her that it was only 9:30.
The hotel was about 15 minutes from the starting line, but the volunteers at the Expo had warned people to be sure to get there early, as congestion was sure to slow things down in the morning. I got up about 5:45, and we were all ready and out the door about an hour later. We stopped at the hotel’s breakfast offerings, and I had my usual oatmeal, and along with it some yogurt and a banana. By 7:15 we were out the hotel door and on to the race! Then there was a slight bump in the road.
The vehicle we were traveling in is equipped with a GPS navigation system. Unfortunately we didn’t have a valid address for the start of the race, so we had to use the ‘old fashioned’ method of mapping directions from the Internet to get to the Expo the night before. However those handwritten directions were nowhere to be found on race morning, so we had to wing it to get to the race. Between the three of us we were able to do so, and we found the starting line and a parking place without too much trouble. Crisis averted!
It was a chilly morning, starting out in the lower 50’s. Knowing it was going to warm up into a beautiful day, I decided that short sleeves and shorts were the way to go. Ultimately I was happy with my decision. With about an hour to kill before race time, we decided to leave some of our stuff at the car and venture over to the course to hit the restrooms and check out the setup. We then met up with two other friends, who were running the full marathon with the husband of the couple I traveled with. I knew that another forum member, fryingpan68, was going to be at the race, and I looked for him as we made our multiple trips to the porta potties; I did see him on our last trip by, but by then it was only 10 minutes til gun time, so I couldn’t stop to say hello.
After my final pre-race pit stop, I lined myself up just ahead of the 10:00 pace sign. The wife of the couple I traveled with, who I’ll call M, met back up with me just before the start. Unfortunately her plan of meeting up with the girlfriend of one of the marathoners in our group backfired, and M ended up having to carry her car key and camera throughout the whole race. She did get a few pictures though, and I’ll update this post when she sends them to me.
Before the race I had no idea what to expect in terms of pace; I used one of the pace calculators on RunnersWorld to get per mile paces for finish times of 2:00, 2:15, and 2:30. I knew that I’d be happy with a finish time of 2:15:00, but my ’secret’ goal was for a 2:00 finish. I had the pace of 9:55 per mile in my head, thinking that would get us a finish of 2:00. So when the race started, I had that target in mind.
The first two miles of the course took us through what appeared to be barracks of what used to be Fort Benjamin Harrison. Just after mile 1, we came across a couple of guys with what sounded like a karaoke machine, belting out Meatloaf’s “I Would Do Anything For Love”… it would be the first of 3 times we’d come across this pair… After mile 2, it was out of the Fort and onto the streets of Lawrence, taking one of the ‘main’ streets for a mile before heading back into the neighborhoods. The main street was rolling and ended up a bit of a downhill on the way out. We made a right turn just after mile 3 into a neighborhood.
With the 9:55 pace in my head, which miraculously conveyed the pace well to my legs, I was feeling good. But somewhere in the neighborhood I started doing some math, and conveyed to M that I thought my pace was wrong for a 2:00 finish. That’s when I realized that I had the per mile pace for a 2:15 finish stuck in my head, and for a 2:00 finish the right pace was 9:22 per mile. M’s goal was to finish in 2:00, and I had decided before the race that I was going to stick with her the best I could for as long as possible, for a finish as close to 2:00 as I could. But at Mile 3, we realized that we were already behind because of my mental error.
Miles 4-6 took us out of the neighborhood, back along some main streets and into another neighborhood. M and I were still together, and had picked up our pace to the 9:15 – 9:20 range. I was still feeling good, like I could sustain this for the rest of the way. Once we got to the halfway point, I was hoping to be able to make up some of the time and make negative splits. At mile 7 I took one of the two Hammergels that I brought, and I was on my way.
Miles 7-9 took us out of the second neighborhood, and to Fort Benjamin Harrison State Park. The transition from the road to the bike path in the state park was woodchips; as we ran over it our feet sunk into the mud a little bit, and both M and I hoped that the bike path wouldn’t be the same surface. As it turns out, the path was paved, and the first mile of the 2 mile loop in the park was downhill. The downhill was a nice break, but knowing that we were to leave the park at the same place we entered it, I knew that there was an uphill to follow. And boy was there ever!
There were actually two separate uphills on the way out of the park. The first was fairly steep, but pretty short. I kept running all the way up, and held my own as nobody really passed me. The second uphill was a bit of a different story. While I kept running the whole way up, my speed had obviously left my legs as people started passing me left and right. Up until this point, I still had visions of making my 2:00 secret goal; but after this hill, it wasn’t meant to be. I crossed the Mile 10 marker in about 1:34:00, which still meant that I had an outside chance. But after the beating my legs got on those hills, I turned my focus to a goal of 2:08:00, the time that one of my fellow forumites had at PDR in September.
By the time we made it out of the park shortly after Mile 11 my legs had somewhat recovered from the hill, and I felt like I was back on my pace. M, however, hadn’t been seen since we started the decent in the park. She told me after the race that she had just hit a wall, and as she saw me pull away around the Mile 10 marker, she heard the Foo Fighters’ “There Goes My Hero” on her iPod.
I hit the 2:00 mark as we passed Mile 12.5, which was the split between the Half Marathon route and the full Marathon route, and was maintaining my pace pretty well. A few blocks down from the split,I passed the karaoke guys again, this time singing some Garth Brooks song, and not doing a very good job of it. As I made the last turns, I mustered what little strength I had in my legs to make a final 1/4 mile kick, crossing the finish line with a gun time of 2:09:01. I stopped my watch a few seconds after I crossed the finish line; my unofficial chip time being 2:06:14. The official chip times were posted on Sunday, where I received my official time of 2:06:11.9, a PR by nearly 43 minutes.
After the race I met up with fryingpan68 and we chatted for a few minutes as I waited for M to finish. If it hadn’t been for that hill in the park, I really believe I could’ve made my secret goal of 2:00. Maybe next time!