Indianapolis Monumental Half Marathon

Grant and I ran the Indianapolis Monumental Half Marathon this last weekend as our first official “racecation”. We’ve decided that it would be fun to run half marathons in different states and turn them into mini vacations. 🙂 This was our second half marathon together. If you know anything about us, you know of our love for adventure and racing. We may not be fast or win any prizes, but we enjoy the hard work and pushing ourselves to the limits. I have to say, I love running races more now with Grant than I ever did before. He’s a great running partner for training even if he does push me to run faster than I’d like. 😉

Unfortunately, we didn’t train as much as we should have for this half marathon. October ended up being busier than we originally planned and we slacked off on our running quite a bit. Grant ran maybe once in the three weeks prior to the race. I trained a couple more times than that, but still did not feel overly prepared.

The morning of the race started out with temperatures in the 30’s and we seriously wondered why we decided to get out of our warm and cozy bed. But our excitement rose and adrenaline started to pump as we stood with roughly 20,000 runners waiting for the start of the race. 20,000 people all with the same insane idea to wake up on a cold, winter morning to run! Crazy right?! But, like they say, we only did a half marathon, so we’re only half crazy. Those who ran the full marathon have my deepest appreciation though, as that is intense and a huge accomplishment!

We finished in 2 hours and 2 minutes, which was our slowest half marathon so far. I was a little bummed about not getting under the two hour mark, but considering how under-prepared we were, I was just happy to have finished. By the last three miles, we were worn out and ready for the race to be done. I’m convinced running is more mental than actually being physically in shape. My brain kept telling me to stop and it was everything I could do to keep running. I love my husband so much, but his “worn out” is definitely not like mine! Or maybe he just handles it better than I do. 😉  At mile 12, he was singing country songs to me as if his legs weren’t killing him and he wasn’t panting for air. It was everything I could do to just keep putting one leg in front of the other.

For those wondering what it’s like to run a half marathon… it’s hard if you’re anything like me! It’s a mental game from about mile 10 to the end and your legs will hurt! But it’s also super fun! You meet other runners and share struggles or just funny things. You run down streets filled with people holding signs to cheer you on. You run by high school bands playing on the street corners. A DJ playing his music from his front yard. A mom and her kids handing out their halloween candy. (I didn’t take any, but that is a brilliant idea!). Young were kids volunteering to pass out water and gatorade throughout the course. So, you may be sore for several days after and struggle with walking, but running a half marathon will be enjoyable and a memory that you’ll always remember. Especially when you run it with with your favorite person. 🙂