Friday, May 1, 2009

On Your Mark, Get Set, GO!


Rain or shine, ready or not, the Indianapolis Mini Marathon is tomorrow. I can hardly believe that the whole training season is behind me already. I am excited to participate in this super fun race, but I have more than a little anxiety this year about my level of fitness. Training is always a struggle; if it were easy, everybody would be doing it. This year my difficulties were definitely multiplied. Busy-ness, stress, sickness, bad weather, and so on. I've been kind of going back and forth in my own mind about my strategy for tomorrow. Last year I had it all planned out - no pits for water or gatorade until I was at least five miles in (fortunately that allowed me to stay hydrated w/o needing to stop to go to the bathroom), run as long as possible & check pace every mile (I was able to run the whole distance at a 10-minute/mile pace which was actually a bit of a surprise to me), & save enough to sprint to the finish (I miscalculated here - you can see the finish long before you actually get there; I almost died b/c I sprinted WAY too early). Not a sophisticated game plan, but a game plan none the less.
This year I keep waffling. Do I just speed walk it? At a pace of 13:30/mile it would still be a decent finish time. Do I try to run the whole thing & just start walking when I get tired? Or do I plan out a walk one mile/run one mile kind of deal? And what do I wear? The shorts have been decided - they are my favorites & have proven themselves not to ride up or fall down. This is an exceedingly crucial thing to know about your shorts. It's a tragedy to have to continually hold them up or pull them down. Ugh!!! But the matter of shirt is undecided. I have a singlet from my running club (a singlet = a tank top like deal made of super great wicking material). It's a floppy kind of fit which isn't my favorite, but I want to wear it so that I identify with the group. Even though I didn't really make any super great new friends this year, we still have suffered a lot together ;-) So the question is this, will it be cool enough for me to wear a shirt under the singlet? Should it be long sleeved or short sleeved? And do I wear a junky old shirt to ditch at the finish? I know from experience that the 30-45 minutes you wait in your corral at the beginning of the race can be awfully cold, goose-bumpy minutes. And if it rains I will be very, very, very sad. And tempted to wear a trash bag. Not really, but still - who wants to get soggy?
Leave me a comment with your opinion on my strategy for running the race & dressing for the race. Your comments are thoroughly enjoyed!

3 comments:

Karis said...

Well, I'm just reading your post now so if I had any advice (which I don't since I can't imagine running a marathon), it would be too late anyway. This was a very interesting post for someone like me who wouldn't have thought of the clothing choices. :-) Looking forward to hearing how the day went. I think you are amazing!

Steph said...

How did it go yesterday? Can't wait to hear about it!

Mary Ann said...

Karis - thanks for thinking I'm amazing ('cause i'm really very ordinary). Running a race like this one just requires preparation. And some crazy stubborn tenacity ;-)