One America Indianapolis 500 Mini Marathon

So the Mini has been something I had always thought would be cool to do someday. I just never saw myself as being in shape enough and I didn't think I'd be able to with the thousands of people at the start line.

Hubby and I have tried various things over the course of the last year, including a membership to the church gym and buying a Wii fit to use and so forth, but it would last as a phase and fizzle out, just a diets do.

So we both knew that if we were to get ourselves into shape, we'd have to make some sort of commitment to it where we had something invested in it. Hubby kept kicking it around and finally said OK I'm gonna do it, after talking with me about it to make sure I was OK with it.

So upon reading all the stuff on it, I really wanted to give it a try, but was very nervous about it as 1. I am MAJORLY out of shape and 2. I've never had any sort of real athletic background. I know I can make it 1-2 miles easily but can I make it for 13.1 miles maintaining a 4mph pace?

So I hemmed and hawed on it for several days and emailed the contact email/number from the marathon website (http://www.500festival.com/marathon) asking if they would work with me on using my guide dog during the race. So over the course of the week, I went back and forth on whether or not I could do it, as my biggest obstacle to training is we are going into winter and with not being able to drive, I am not able to get to the church gym to work out. I've been in touch with the gym and church staff to see if there was something I could work out, but it wasn't panning out on a consistent basis. So I realize that the majority of my training for this is going to be outdoors and in the neighborhoods around our home and had to determine if I was willing to make this commitment to doing this.

Rei and I went to the church for another thing last Thursday and we did 4 one tenth of a mile laps around the gym in just about 10 minutes. So we came home and Hubby and I talked about it and decided to go ahead and go for it.

So then we began to measure out some routes here around the house and was able to determine a 1.75 route and a 1 mile stretch between two roads making it easy to do a nice long stretch without crossing streets and on a nice wide paved pathway.

So on Sunday Rei and I walked the 1.75 mile route in 31 minutes
Monday we did it in 25 minutes
Tuesday we did it in 22 minutes
Wednesday we did a 2 mile route in 33 minutes, but that included a pit stop for Rei
After Wednesday, I was feeling quite sore and such so we took several days off and today, Sunday- we walked the 2 mile route with MD and AC on their bikes.

Unfortunately, time wasn't nearly as good as we had another pit stop for Rei and AC screamed and cried most of the way after 1 mile as he was mad that he wasn't in front and that MD was faster than him. So had to stop several times trying to get him to knock it off.

We did make it through the route though in 38 minutes, and Rei and I were doing very well and feeling good. We probably would have continued on a little more if the kids hadn't been fighting and melting down.

So since Hubby and I have signed up, Dad and my Aunt have signed up as well! They will be walking it with me as Hubby runs it. We are just going to have to figure out how we are going to handle soccer/childcare the day of the race, and continue to train and improve paces and distance that we are able to go.

Now we have to work our way though the access issue we are having with the mini committee. More on that in the next post.