Marathon Monday - Amy

The 2012 Indianapolis Mini-Marathon is complete!  Kelly and I successfully completed this extremely HOT race!  More on that in a minute...

As you know from earlier posts, my crazy sister and I have decided to run the Chicago Marathon this year.  I decided that as a way to hold myself accountable for training runs and as a way to keep all of my wonderful supporters updated on my progress I would start "Marathon Mondays" on our blog.  The Mini-Marathon was sort of the big distracter before my official marathon training began, so I decided that today's update of the mini would be a great way to start the Marathon Monday tradition.  For the next 5 weeks you will be reading a lot about the shorter runs that I'm doing to work on form prior to actually starting official marathon training.  Also, I will be reading some books and doing some research on diet, stretching, and other things that I should be doing to keep my body healthy and functioning during training.  After the first 5 weeks you will be getting an update on my weekly runs and how I am progressing.  I also am going to be touching a lot on the mission of the Payton Foundations (the cause that I am running for) and my personal connection to it.

So, for the first installment of Marathon Mondays:

WE DID IT!  13.1 MILES COMPLETE!

Kelly and I (along with two of her good friends who are now my new friends) finished the very hot and humid mini-marathon.  Kelly can update you on her experience, but I can say we both got times that were relatively close to our times last year.  At first I was really bummed about this because I feel like I am in SO much better running shape than I was last year.  However, it was incredibly warm and there were lots of water stops (which led to a couple bathroom stops that did not happen last year).  After hearing accounts from other seasoned runners who have said that this was one of the hardest minis they have been apart of I am happy to take a similar time to mine last year.  I imagine that if the weather was exactly the same as the year before I would have had a better time.

The race itself is very impressive.  There are 25-30,000 people who run this race every year and every mile has at least one water or gatorade station.  Also, they added lots of "misters" to help cool people down.  I can safely say that I have never been more sweaty in my life so all of this hydration was very important.  There are lots of fun bands along the race route as well.  Running around the Speedway is also really exciting and fun (for about the first 5 minutes).  I had two wonderful sorority sisters passing out gatorade on the speedway and it was great to see them.  Around mile 11 I did have to fight a bout of nausea (and my fight it I mean I had to throw up in a port-o-potty) and then I did a lot of very SLOW jogging after that until I felt a little bit more like myself.  Feeling totally like myself didn't happen until Sunday morning after lots of rest and water.  After the race, I was really looking forward to going in the hot tub.  So much so that I had my sister buy me a bathing suit at target because I forgot to pack mine.  Well, my body had different plans.  I laid down for what I thought would be a 15 minute power nap and didn't wake up for 4 hours.  Whoops.  Oh well, I got a cute new suit out of it.  Also, I ended up losing a toenail at some point during the 13.1 miles.  RIP Second Toenail of my Left Foot.  You will be missed.

So, all in all it was a great race.  The weekend was lots of fun and we got to see lots of people in Indy who we haven't seen for awhile.  I will definitely be signing up for this mini-marathon again.  It really is a fun weekend.

On to marathon training!  I have 12 miles on the schedule for this week.  I will be running a 3 miler, 4 miler, and 5 miles this weekend.  If you are interested in helping me out with fundraising for my wonderful cause, the link to my fundraising page is below.

http://www.active.com/donate/teamsweetness2012/AmyJackson