May 09, 2010

The 500 Festival Mini-Marathon 2010

I'm home from Indianapolis! I'll give you the basic rundown and post a few pictures...

FRIDAY:  We left Friday at 11:00 a.m. Renee drove, and it was just Renee, my mom and I in her car. The other girls from MOMS Club drove separately (Stacey, Melissa, and Carla). We drove straight through to Indy, about 4.5 hours.  Got to the hotel, and I was SUPER nervous to see my sister and brother.

My sister was always telling me how excited she was to see me, and how awesome I must look, etc. I was afraid I wouldn't live up to her expectations. Renee and I had a glass of wine while we waited for everyone to show up. So my sister got to the hotel just as we had to leave for our dinner reservations. I yelled to her down the hall, and she said, "Ohmygod, Katie, I wouldn't have even recognized you!!" and she gave me a hug. My brother said, "You look awesome!" (which is a big compliment coming from him).

Went to dinner at Buca di Beppo's. It's this fabulous Italian restaurant that serves everything family style (when you order something, it serves 3-4 people for a small, and 6-8 for a large). What we've done in the past is order a bunch of different things and everyone just passes it around and shares. I planned out in advance what I would eat, which was just plain old spaghetti with marinara (the entire small order had 20 points, so I ate half of the order for 10 points.


Went to the Expo to pick up our packets for the race. I asked the man if I could get a medium shirt instead of an XL (I registered last May, when I was still my heaviest... and I knew I'd need a 2XL, so I deliberately ordered an XL to hopefully lose a little and fit into it, lol).  He said no, that whatever was on my bib was the size I got. So my shirt is ginormous. Oh well!  Went back to the hotel.


I brought my 24W jeans with me on the trip so that I could show my sister. I put them on, and everyone was SHOCKED. They were laughing and saying how amazing it was. My sister grabbed her camera to take a picture of me wearing the jeans, and then my BROTHER actually took a picture too! (That is a big compliment--he's not easily impressed!)  Went to bed, and slept like crap (I was nervous about the race, and besides, I always sleep like crap in hotels).

SATURDAY: Woke up at 5 a.m. Quickly dressed and went downstairs with Renee for breakfast.  I had oatmeal with brown sugar and a banana, and some coffee. Was SUPER nervous about the race (no idea why! I'm 88 pounds lighter than last year, AND I trained for it). Went down to the corral at 7:00 (race started at 7:30).



It was FREEZING. Temp was in the 30s, with a wind chill of much less. The wind was terrible. I seriously considered picking up someones used sweatshirt off the ground to wear. Once the race actually starts, it takes about 30 minutes for the walkers to get to the starting line (keep in mind there are 35,000 people that do this race!)

My sister was walking with me, and we were stop and go, waiting to get to the start line. I decided to turn around to see if I could see the end of the line of people. I turned around only to discover WE were the end!! There was no one behind us! So I panicked a little, and then we moved over to the left side of the crowd and started nosing our way forward. Got to the start line, and we started walking at a good pace (about 16:00/mile).  My goal this year was to finish in 3:30 or less.

We saw all kinds of cool things along the way.... at mile one, we could see the zoo on the right hand side and the elephant was in plain view. Reading the shirts that people wear was fun. There was one girl I saw at mile 3 whose inner thighs were SO CHAFED that they were bleeding--I felt so bad for her. At mile 6 was the Indy 500 track, and that is 2.5 miles around.

I felt REALLY GOOD the whole way. My sister and I stayed together the whole time, and we did some running and some walking (maybe only 1 mile of running TOTAL).  We saw firemen with all of their gear on (including their face masks) and they were walking pretty fast. We decided that if they were near us just before the finish line, we'd ask them to carry us across the finish line--wouldn't that be an awesome picture?! haha

The last tenth of a mile, I saw my mom and Renee on the sidelines cheering us on. (Renee finished the race in 1:49, went to the room to shower and change, then went back to watch us cross the finish line... what a champ!)  My mom was frantically trying to take off her sweatshirt and give it to us, which I thought was silly because we just walked 13.1 miles in short sleeves.

 My sister grabbed my hand it put it up in the air as we crossed the line. Our finish time was 3:23, which was thrilled with!  Then we went and got our picture taken, and went to where Renee and my mom were to watching for Stacey, Melissa, and Carla.

We saw Stacey and Carla cross the finish about 25 minutes after I did. Melissa wasn't with them, and they shouted that they didn't know where she was, they left her at mile 1. Everyone wanted to get their free beer, but it was WAAAAY too cold for me to think about beer. My brother went back to the room to get sweatshirts and jackets and whatnot for everyone. We finally went back to the hotel about 30 minutes later, and I found out what happened to Melissa (she wasn't keeping the minimum 17:00/mi pace, so the bus picked her up).





After the race, I showered, got dressed, and did my hair and make-up and all that. Renee and I went to the lobby and had a glass of wine. Renee said that on the elevator, this one guy was checking me out big-time... she said she wanted to tell him to "take a picture, it lasts longer", lol. It surprised me, because I'm not used to guys checking me out!  The hotel had FREE happy hour (beer, wine, and mixed drinks) from 5:30-7:30.  I went down there with Renee, my brother, my sister, and Jen and Natalie (my sister's friends). Had two beers there, and it was a lot of fun just goofing around talking.

Went to Rock Bottom Brewery for dinner, and OMG--it was DELICIOUS! I looked up the menu online and calories and all that, so I knew what I would order. I got an 11 oz sirloin (cut in half, because I didn't have enough points to eat the whole thing!), lemon rice, green beans, and roasted mushrooms. The whole meal was 9 points :)  The food was soooo good.

Went back to the hotel, exhausted, and went to bed early.

SUNDAY:  Woke up at 7, went to breakfast (oatmeal) and then we drove home. I'm not sore at all, really... I'm feeling AWESOME compared to the last two years!  I can't tell you how happy that makes me!

Some comparison photos:

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