May 03, 2009

The 500 Festival Mini-Marathon 2009



(This is an old race report that I wrote a couple of years before starting Runs for Cookies. I transferred it here.)



I just got home from Indianapolis, and I feel like every bone in my body is just ACHING. But DAMN I feel good for finishing the half marathon!! I really was worried that I wasn't going to make it. At the beginning, everyone started running at the start line (usually all the people in the last few corrals are walkers)--I thought "Shit! They're going to pass us and then the bus is going to pick us up for going too slow!"  but we averaged a 17ish minute per mile pace and finished in 3 hrs, 51 minutes.  I have BLISTERS GALORE on my feet... I'll even gross you out with a picture... but I finished!



Mandie's birthday was Saturday (race day) so she was really excited to do her first half-marathon on her 34th birthday. We got her a cookie cake from the mall and celebrated at the hotel. 

On Friday night, we went to this Italian restaurant called Buca di Beppo. My sister made reservations months ago, because it's impossible to find a place to eat without a reservation during the 500 Festival in Indy.  Anyways, we got there and they didn't have our reservation. There were 13 of us waiting to eat. They thought my sister was lying about the reservation, so she ended up going to her car to get the print out. Showed it to the manager, and he COMPLETELY COMPED our $250+ check when we were done!! We got SOOOO much food for F-R-E-E. It was awesome.

At the hotel, the air conditioning in our room wasn't working, so we complained about that and they never really fixed it. So we got $115 comped off of that bill as well!  And... our hotel also had FREE happy hour!! 

We had SO MUCH FUN and I'm super looking forward to going again next year.  I'm making a big huge nearly impossible goal to weigh 150 before next year's race. That's 100 pounds to lose. I know I said I wasn't going to diet again, but I kind of want to now. I keep thinking how much easier the race will be if I lose this extra weight. I'm going to start counting points tomorrow... and I won't stop until the next 500 Festival (May 8, 2010).

Oh, and speaking of losing weight... Bernie from The Biggest Loser was at the race yesterday too! I didn't meet him, but just saw that he was talking to a news reporter. He still looks good.



Here are the race pictures (These were not in my original blog post because I HATED them... and later, they became my "before" pics...







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