Losing some weight has really helped me to get back to being able to run which I really enjoy doing. As I lost more weight and got faster I needed a goal to shoot for so Ryan and I decided to run in a mini-marathon and found Louisville was putting one on to kick off their Derby Week Festival. We signed up and kicked our training into high gear. My goal was just to be able to finish since I had not ran in one since my “early” college days.
On the 26th of April around 6:00 AM Ryan and I were standing in line for the shuttle bus that would take us to the starting line. It was still dark, cool, and spiting rain but we felt good as the bus seemed to go on and on. We were dropped off at the start line and preceded to find our pace time and packed ourselves in the crowd as the rain finally seemed to stop. There were about 12,000 people running in this event which is nice compared to the 30,000 to 40,000 that run in the Indianapolis mini.
The gun sounded and we were off! It took us about two minutes before we got to the start line which was fast as it took Ryan forty five minutes to reach the one in the Indianapolis’ mini last year. The course took us through a park that had several large hills, but was very scenic. After about two or three miles we were able to hit our pace pretty well and they winded us around back past the start line and sent us on a track through some neighborhoods. The architecture on some of these homes were that of historic near city suburbs with full trees, which already had leaves on them, and ivy growing up their sides. The route took us through Church Hill Downs and then into downtown Louisville for the finish.
We finished 800/801 out of a field of about 9385 with a start line to finish line time of an 1 hour and 44 minutes which broke down to an 7:57 mile pace. Overall I would have to say that this race was more enjoyable then the two Indianapolis minis I ran back in college and the scenery was by far superior. Now that I made my goal of finishing a mini I can now set new time goals and get the competitive juices flowing again.
