500 Festival Mini-Marathon - May 6th, 2006 - I got 2nd Place!!!

Yesterday Jill and I spent the majority of the day downtown, as it was finally time for the 500 Festival Mini-Marathon. I got 2nd place - among men aged 25 to 29 from Indianapolis named Chuck! As you can see I was representing the B.C. Welding running club. I trained for the last 13 weeks, running through the neighborhood to get ready for the run, but still didn't feel totally prepared for the 13.1 miles that had to be run. The picture above is Jill and I at the staging area prior to beginning the race. I think my number was based on the predicted finish time I supplie of 150 minutes, or 2 and a 1/2 hours. There were 35,000 people signed up, and about 28,000 finished the race yesterday (most of the discrepancies are from no-shows, I think most starters finished). The race started downtown at 7:30, so Jill and I had to get up at 5:30 to head downtown to park and get to the start line. She saw me off and then hung around downtown, visiting the Red Eye Cafe, which is famous for taking about an hour to bring your order, so it was the perfect place for Jill to kill some time. She was really supportive by coming down there with me, seeing me off, and then waiting at the finish line. It was definitely easier knowing she was there waiting for me.
This is what I look like after running 13 miles. Not much different. The race was cool, we started downtown and went up to the Speedway and around the Indy 500 track and then back downtown for the finish. There was a bar at Mile 10 that was handing out free beer to the runners. Nothing like a bunch of bikers to hand out beer to distance runners. That was too funny. Of course I grabbed a beeer, but I think I really paid for it about 20 minutes later, while trying to finish, because I was just plain spent. I finished with a time of 2 hours, 28 minutes, which was good for 16,547th place. I was really hoping for a finish in the top 10, but maybe that will have to wait until next year, or next lifetime. You can see my official results (and everyone else's) at this website (has a lookup feature, you will have to click on Half Marathon on the right) http://www.500festival.com/events/event.asp?event_id=1032 Also look up a guy named Stephen Coover, a firefighter from Bloomington, he ran the half marathon dressed in full fireman's gear (including the respirator), for charity donations.
This is the first place women's finisher, with a time of 1 hour, 15 minutes. She beat me by over an hour. Last year she ran the race 5 months pregnant. Kind of makes you feel lame just knowing people do stuff like that. Let's just try not to think about it.
This is my finisher's medal. The one and only distance running medal in my ownership. In fact, I don't think I had received an award for sports participation since my high school MSA soccer days.

I should be getting some more pictures from the official photographers when they publish them on their website later this week. We'll update the blog with any new ones that we get.