Mini Marathon

Daniel ran in the Indianapolis 500 Festival Mini-Marathon last Saturday. He has been training since Christmas I guess. I am so very proud of him for not only running the whole thing on Saturday, finishing in under 2 hours (he finished in 1 hour 53 minutes), and actually making it through the last several months of getting up at 5:00 every morning to run (so he could be home in the evenings with Sadie and I), but I'm especially proud of him for enjoying the whole process and being so positive the entire time. He was determined to run this year, and I'm so proud he did it! Who knows if he'll ever run in another one, but at least he enjoyed running this year and did so well!

The race started at 7:30 a.m. He met a few friends up here close to our house at 5:45 and rode down there with them. The race started in downtown Indy and snaked its way through some less desirable parts of the city to get to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. They ran a lap on the speedway (which is 2.5 miles long itself) and then were routed back to downtown Indy to finish the race. There were live musicians and bands playing at every 1/2 mile marker plus people cheering them on almost the entire way. I was so amazed at how many people were just standing out there cheering for everyone that was running. So fun! The mini is a total of 13.1 miles. There are corrals that are lettered A through Z. Daniel was in corral K. He said he got a little frustrated with the fact that some people actually started the race off walking. So his first mile went a little slower than planned, but who's timing when you run 13 miles?!!! :) It is the nation's largest half marathon with around 35,000 participants. So there is definitely a crowd of runners!

Sadie and I got down there around 8:30, anticipating that Daniel would finish somewhere around 9:45 (that's where he was shooting for since his corral probably wouldn't cross the start line until 7:45). By the time we parked and walked over to the street where the finish line was, it was almost 9:00. So we got to see some of the more avid runners coming in. I have to admit that I teared up alot while I was waiting for Daniel. Pregnancy is making me a little more emotional than usual, but I was so proud of him. What a great accomplishment!

Sadie had a great time as well. She thought she was part of the race and kept running along the sidewalk saying, "Sadie running". She ran up and down, finally making her way all the way down to the last 1/2 mile marker. That's when we looked up and saw Daniel. I was so scared we were going to miss seeing him with me chasing Sadie around. Luckily we didn't, and I yelled and got his attention. I'm sure that was the highlight of his day!!! ;) Just kidding, but he did say that it was a nice treat to actually get to see us and yell back to us. We then speed-walked our way back to the finish line to find him. There were also bands playing in the park next to the finish line. So we hung out for a while and let Sadie dance and play and hang out with a new friend she made. The only other thing Daniel wanted me to include in this post, for memory's sake, was that he was glad Sadie and I went and was glad that Sadie got to have such a fun time. Here are some pictures from the day.