2009 Mini Race Report (Part 1)

Since I don’t really have a whole lot of other stuff to write about, I'm going to stretch the race recap out as long as I can. This also helps me avoid doing any actual work as I sit here at my desk.

<-- Neither of these people are me


Pre-Race
Every year, people start to freak out about traffic, parking and getting into their corrals in time. After my 2nd year, I started playing things casually and not sweating it so much. For those of you familiar with Indianapolis, the start line runs from the State Museum back Washington street to the Artsgarden – it takes a lot of space to cram 35,000 people and they tend to use every inch. As a result, a lot of the road on the west side of downtown are closed – or congested. However, the last several years, I simple come down the other side and park on the east side of the circle. No traffic and no problems.

With the race starting at 7:30, I had pre-arranged a meet with 3 of the guys from work whom I had been (on and off) training with for the last month or so. I parked the car about 6 and hit up one of the hotels to take care of some “business” pre-race. I also liberally applied the Tiger Balm to my lower back in the hopes of avoiding any mid-race flare-ups. This stuff is amazing. I waffled on what to wear a couple of times, since the weather yokels couldn’t make up their minds on what the temps were actually going to be. I ended up opting for short sleeves with a long-sleeve shirt over top that I planned to dump as soon as we got rolling. About 6:30, I hooked up with two of the other guys (John and Jeremy – we couldn’t find TW) and we started to make our way down to the starting corrals. I needed to check a bag, so that meant a walk up the entire column of runners – a bit of a pain, but John and I jogged back to the corral afterwards, which was a good way to get the blood moving. We were starting back in R because John got dumped there and couldn’t move forward - even though he was probably going to beat Jeremy and I rather handily. Usually, it seems like you are milling around in the corral for ages before anything happens, but this year I think they pulled the ropes earlier than in years past and people started to move forward. Because of hotel construction right at the start line, we were being told that the wait to get going would be longer than in previous years. That was putting it mildly