I came in 4,073rd place. YES!

4,000th place doesn't sound that bad when you consider that there were 39,000 people in the race. I beat like, 35,000 people. Sweet.

I ran the Indy Mini-Marathon last weekend. It's the country's biggest half-marathon and it was crowded. I was in a solid column of not fast people the whole time. I have no idea how many people I passed. I signed up for an estimate 2:20 finish, and I finished 30 minutes before that. I passed thousands of people during that run, one at a time. My GPS said that I ran 13. 17 miles, but I think I ran more than that with all the zigzag-jagging I did to get in front of someone or to get to an open spot. Anyways, I learned my lesson: don't be too modest when estimating finish time.

But the crowd was part of the fun. There were lots of spectators and many gawkers that came out to see the race. Some people had the funny look on their face of "What are these crazy people doing and why are there so many of them running in front of my house?" That was probably because this year's route took us on the less scenic 10th Street. Several bewildered residents sat half-dressed in folding chairs in their lawns blowing cigarette smoke onto us runners. Thanks for that, really. And there were more bands and musical acts than one can imagine. I don't know why people broke the no iPod rule because I was never without a soundtrack. Some of the acts were hilarious, others were groovin, and a few had great beats to get us going.

My run was totally easy. I told everyone that my goal was getting in under 2 hours. My unspoken goal was to beat my previous finish time of 1:52. My secret goal was to break 1:50. I guess I was prepared and I had the incentive of wanting to impress Kevin. I kept thinking about the look on Kevin's face when he finishes a race. It's the look of his heart beating out of his chest, of sheer determination bursting through his furrowed brows, and of nausea. He runs so hard, and I usually finish with extra energy, wishing I'd run harder. So I did this time. I ran harder. But I still had a little left at the end. I'll get it next time. Until then I'll be satisfied with my personal best.

The stats:

My splits: 5 mile: 42:41, 10 mile: 1:25:16, 13.1 mile: 1:49:45

Overall pace: 8:23

I came in 725th out of 15,747 women. And 190th out of 2879 women in my age group.

The photos from brightroom:

I wish I could copy and paste them into the blog, but alas, that would cost me way too much money. So click on one of the links below and go see the funny photos yourself.

Here's a dorky shot , and yet another, of me running over the bricks on the Speedway. (The bricks are the finish for such races as the Indy 500 and the Brickyard 400. I didn't know this at the time, but everyone around me was really happy when we crossed this line. It was only mile 6, though.)

How about this scary leg muscle photo at the finish? I swore people were cheering for me because they knew I had only a few seconds to get in under my goal finish of 1:50. I so have to get some cooler running shades.

If you want to see the rest of the pictures you can go to brightroom's website by clicking here, and entering my bib number: 40228.

Here's a shot of David, Robin, Caleb and I after the race. Sorry about the dapple-face Robin, I forgot to turn the fill-flash on. David did well too, finishing in his goal time.