Mini-Marathon 2008 - isn't it great?

Meelyn and my husband ran the 33rd OneAmerica 500 Festival Mini-Marathon last Saturday, which was a gorgeous day for a run of any kind, whether you were trying to beat last year's time or just going out to the market for doughnuts and the morning paper.

The best news is that they beat last year's time by TWENTY FIVE MINUTES. Woooooo-hooooooo!

Last year, they were hampered by the fact that Mee developed a blister on her foot at the ninth mile, necessitating a pit stop right on the yard of bricks at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway to put on a bandage that a kind-hearted fellow runner passed off to her. This year, Meelyn ran with a waist pouch containing Band-Aids, some Neosporin with a topical anesthetic in it, Glide balm, a battery for her MP3 player, some tissues, a camera and a chapstick. Because, I am told, nothing, but nothing, is worse than trying to run with dry, crusty lips.

Here's a little diary I kept of the morning's events:

7:43 a.m. We seems to be doing well after a bit of a bad start. Our Marriott Courtyard parking lot was closed this year, so we didn't have a clue where to park, after actually managing to make our way to New York Street (no thanks to MapQuest, more on that later) - not an easy feat considering how many downtown streets were closed off. I've been listening to 93.1 WIBC and Steve Simpson just related that while there are 35,000 runners, there are an estimated 60,000 more people downtown as volunteers, vendors and spectators. Which, as it turns out, is one heck of a lot of peeeeeeeoooopppplle.

Okay. Back to MapQuest. I told my husband that using MapQuest was a bad idea, mostly because every map I have ever foolishly relied upon from that website sucks the dirty water than a herd of camels and eight flocks of flea-infested sheep has just bathed in. MapQuest is one of the most useless websites on the internet and you who are reading this would do well not to forget that. But if you want to go to Indianapolis from Kansas City via Providence, Rhode Island, they'll getcha there.

Anyhoo, we found parking across from the Courtyard and it was only $5 as opposed to last year's $20, so we felt somewhat mollified.

My husband was nervous and irritable about the crap directions and the fact that Markin Luther King Street and West Street are not marked in downtown Indy. Mee was nervous because my husband was nervous. They set off for their starting corral at 7:22, which was U this year, a reflection on their slower running time last year due to Meelyn's blister. In 2008, they started in Q.

The race is supposed to begin at 7:30 with the wheelchair racers, followed by the A corral of elite runners, all of whom have legs six feet long and are made of sinew, bone and muscle with now available fat. They are all so very, very thin, they look as if you could track a bite of food through their entire digestive systems. We have no truck with that type of body structure in our family, no sirree.

Aisling and I have settled down in Buddy, armed with schoolbooks, library books, notebooks, the radio and my cell phone. I also had my makesup bag with me, so that I could make myself presentable before going out among the innocent, defenseless citizenry.

The weather is cool and overcast, a tiny bit humid, which is a total contrast to last year, which was sunny, cool and miserably, sweatingly humid.

8:44 a.m. I'm thinking about calling my husband and Meelyn to see what they're doing.

8:45 a.m. No answer

9:00 a.m. No answer

9:16 a.m. No answer. I am thinking about causing physical harm to my husband. What is the use of bringing cell phones to this $#%@ event IF HE ISN'T GOING TO ANSWER??!! AAAAGGGHHH!!!!

10:00 a.m. No answer. Much muttering in the under-the-breath style taking place. Listening to the radio is entertaining, though. The race seems to be moving along smoothly.

10:42 a.m. They're done! I just got the call. Now all we have to do is find one another in a crowd of 95,000 people. Shouldn't be too difficult.

11:00 a.m. I had to spend a great deal of time on the bridge over the Canal, shouting instructions into my telephone. I probably sounded like a harpy, but the noise level was so intense from bands playing, amplified voices on microphones and the sheer decibility of 95,000 human beings crammed into a relatively small space, I had to yell to make myself heard.

My husband was a bit turned around and couldn't remember where the Courtyard Inn was from last year. So I was standing there with Aisling yelling, "FIND THE BRIDGE! DO YOU SEE THE BRIDGE? LOOK FOR THE BUILDING WITH THE DARK GREEN AWNING! DO YOU SEE AN AWNING?"

He was saying, "I DON'T SEE A BRIDGE! I DON'T SEE AN AWNING!"

I shrieked, "DO YOU SEE THE BIG MARSH TRUCK?"

"YES! I SEE THE MARSH TRUCK." It was kind of hard to miss, what with the six foot ear of corn on the side, and a bunch of grapes as big as dinner plates.

"THEN WE'RE VERY CLOSE! WALK AWAY FROM THE PARK! WALK AWAY FROM THE TRUCK! WALK UP THE STREET TOWARD THE AMBULANCES!"

"WHAT?" he yelled. I began to get a terrible Grandad-and-Mary Liz foresight of our golden years together, hollering back and forth about the location of our false teeth and spectacles.

I finally got my husband and Meelyn walking up the street toward us, although he resolutely refused to admit that he could see a bridge, much less walk over it, until he was halfway across. By that time, I was bellowing, "I CAN SEE YOU! I CAN SEE YOU! KEEP WALKING!" while I watched the two of them, their heads swiveling this way and that, trying to locate us. Aisling was jumping up and down and waving her arms, but still they couldn't see us, even though we had both purposely dressed in bright clothing. The two of them practically fell over us before my husband clicked off his phone and said, in a slightly accusatory tone, "Oh, THERE you are."

We were all really stoked at their excellent finishing time and went for a celebratory lunch at Hardee's. The rest of the day was spent cheerfully lolling about and watching the action, which my husband taped on WISH-TV 6. And can you believe it? WE SAW MEELYN AND MY HUSBAND! It was just too cool. The television camera captured them just as they were crossing the starting line, moving from a walk into a slow jog. They were right at the front of the screen. It was awesome.

They're already talking about next year, and possibly doing the half-marathon at the Indianapolis Marathon in October.

10:42

Practice makes perfect

Three times a week, my husband gets up at 5:30 a.m. to go to the YMCA and run on a treadmill. Since I am often just going to bed at 5:30 a.m., this creates some interesting situations with him yawning a "Good morning" to me while I scratch myself and yawn "Shut up" back at him.

Three times a week, I wake Meelyn up at 7:30 a.m. and patiently listen to her whine her way into her gym clothes, reminding her that her friend Matt, the swimmer, gets up for practice at some vile hour nearly every morning of the week to go do laps in that wet, wet water while she gets to run on a treadmill with a built-in fan, watching Fox & Friends and listening to her MP3 player. Matt cannot listen to his iPod while swimming, so just give it a rest already and put on your shoes.

Every Sunday afternoon, Mee and her dad go off on one of their long runs. Last Sunday was their first day this training season to be able to do that outside. They did six miles on a new route that takes them through town rather than out through the wind-swept prairie they were running last year.

They came in the house all rosy-cheeked and cheerful, throwing off gloves, hats and sweatshirts and smelling of fresh, cold air. My husband is stoked because they're doing a much stronger pace than last year, doing very little walking. The two of them managed the six mile run in just a bit over an hour, which is a huge step for Meelyn. My husband generally has about a ten-minute pace per mile; he's holding back for now to coach Mee, but he tells me that with practice, she'll soon be able to leave his forty-one year old self in the dust. Or the snow, as the case was last Sunday.

They had to run on the city streets (into the traffic, single file, as is proper when on foot) because the sidewalks were still covered with piles of snow. My husband says its amazing how many people will see them running along the side of the road, yet won't move over into the second lane to avoid hitting them.

"Some of those cars come within inches," he said, making my mouth go dry and my heart momentarily stand still. "We're running as close to the curb as we can and the second lane is wide open, but theyll look right at us and refuse to move."

"But one guy moved into the other lane and gave us a friendly beep-beep and a thumbs-up," Meelyn said hurriedly, lest I think that all the drivers in our city are heartless monsters.

That's one reason why I didn't like them running on the prairie road last year. That road has a wide shoulder, but it is a state highway and people were flying by them at 60+ miles per hour. On this new route, the cars are much slower. But also much closer.

I'm thinking about taking out a big, colorful billboard along their route that says something like, "Please be considerate of runners -- sometimes the sidewalks are covered with snow or are in bad repair and they have no choice but to run on the street. Drive by them the way you'd want people to drive by your spouse or child."

I pray that God will keep them safe and protect them from careless, arrogant aggressive drivers.

And they're off!!

Training for the OneAmerica 500 Festival Indy Mini-Marathon began yesterday, with Meelyn and my husband beginning their alternating three days/four days per week running schedule. Yesterday, they both ran two miles, a paltry distance for them. This distance will increase to twelve miles the week before the Mini (which is held the first Saturday in May).

Last night, my husband and I were talking about their training and how excited he was that Meelyn was starting off this year on such a positive note. "Last year at this time, she couldn't even run a mile," he reminisced. "This year, she ran the entire two miles on our first day of training and didn't stop to walk even once."

He then went off into a riff on his running times and how he hopes to improve the time he achieved at the Indy Marathon last October -- he did the half-marathon and completed the course in 2:10, which is the same time he achieved at the 2006 Mini. He and Meelyn had a time of just over three hours for the 2007 Mini, their pace slowing up a lot after Mee developed that blister at the sixth mile.

He worries me when he talks about running times. It seems to imply that he plans to leave Meelyn in the dust. I said this to him and he gave me an inscrutable look.

"You don't seem to really understand what I'm telling you about Mee's training, do you?" he asked.

I was uncertain. "No, I guess I don't."

"My point with telling you about how well she did with her training is to bring to your attention to the fact that if there's going to be any leaving in the dust, it's going to be her leaving me, not the other way around. If it doesn't happen at the Mini this year, it will definitely happen the next time we run together."

Amazing! To think that the very same baby who flatly refused to crawl and who showed a supreme disinclination to ever get up on her own two feet and walk when there was a staff there on hand (me, Daddy, Nanny, Poppy) to carry her, is now old enough and athletic enough to outrun her muscular, cardio whiz-kid of a dad.

Mini-Marathon Day!

My husband and Meelyn participated in the 32nd OneAmerica 500 Festival Indy Mini-Marathon today, which happens to be the biggest half-marathon in the United States and the eighth largest running event in the same.

Their time was 3:04, which isn't too bad, considering that Meelyn's special really, really expensive running shoes with special really, really expensive running socks rubbed a blister on the arch of her right foot. It started bothering her, she said, right when they started their sixth mile at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

A lady running close to them heard Meelyn say that she thought she had a blister, and that kind person unzipped her waist pack and brought out some Band-Aids as they all ran along. How nice is that? We had carefully packed Meelyn's waist pack with every possible thing we thought she'd need, including sunscreen, extra batteries for her MP3 player, tissues and some little gummi carbohydrate doo-dads for extra energy and a camera, but neither of us ever considered bandages since her shoes have never bothered her before.

So instead of kneeling to kiss the famous yard of bricks, Meelyn sat down to bandage her poor foot.

Although the temperature was a pleasant 68 degrees, the humidity was just awful. My husband and Meelyn have done their training, as all the other runners have done, during the low-humidity cold months. Only in the past three weeks of this fake spring we've been experiencing have they run in temps over 50 degrees. And the air has been as dry as a mummy's tongue.

Aisling and I were hot as we stood waiting in Military Park for them to come across the finish line, so I was having some worried feelings about how they were faring. They are both notoriously warm-blooded, the kind of people that think a good outfit to build a snowman in is shorts, a tank top and mittens. Aisling's ponytail was stuck to the back of her neck and all around me, I smelled a strange smell that overpowered the delicious aromas emanating from all the foood vendors' stalls: sweat. Everyone was sweaty - there was no "perspiring" or "glowing" about it and I hope I didn't type that loud enough for Orson Welles to hear.

Meelyn ran like an athlete of ancient Greece, my husband reported, powering through the pain in her foot and the misery of the heat to master this mini-marathon. She was so amazing and so cheerful at the end of the race that we, of course, had to stop at Frazier's on the way home for ice cream. She got a chocolate-chip cookie dough ice cream which she is currently eating as she soaks her wounded foot in Epsom salts. She came home, like a Spartan warrior, with her shield, not on it.

I am deliriously proud of her, so forgive me for mixing the athletes and the warriors in that last paragraph.

Aisling and I scored a fabulous parking space right near Military Park on New York Street in the Residence Inn by Marriott parking lot. It cost $15 to park there, but it afforded us an amenity which is priceless in people-dense events like the Mini-Marathon: bathroom privileges.

Last year way my husband's first year to run the Mini (2:10) and the girls and I hung out in Military Park, trying desperately to hold our pee so that we could avoid the fearsome line of Port-O-Lets. I had thought to bring a roll of toilet tissue and a 55-gallon drum of hand sanitizer with me, but still. Still. Those things are so gross and I always seem to choose the potty that was last used by a person who apparently has eaten nothing but baked beans, raw cauliflower and bratwurst for the past lifetime.

Anyway, the girls held their pee like camels hold water, but I couldn't make it. Suffice it to say that I was trying desperately, upon my exit from the Port-O-Let, to wash my hands, hair and entire body in Purell. I had to be physically restrained from trying to wash the entire Indianapolis metro area.

This year, Aisling and I were allowed by the cheerful desk clerk to use the really posh ladies' facilities at the Courtyard Inn. There was a real flushy toilet. And a lovely smelling foamy soap. Artwork on the walls! Silk plants! A big sink with attractive fixtures with a large stack of soft paper hand towels next to it! I didn't know paper could be made to feel like that. Re-living my experiences from the previous year, I wanted to just stay and bask in the beauty, but Aisling sternly dragged me out.

We were scheduled to meet up with my husband and Meelyn about three hours into the race at the pavilion in the park. Unfortunately, we didn't realize that the Pavilion is being refurbished and was thus fenced off from everyone in the Rest & Recovery area. This left Aisling and I with nowhere to sit. We had come a little earlier than we'd planned (after taking a refreshing forty minute nap in the van, very necessary after going to bed very late and getting up at 4:30 a.m.) so that we could enjoy some people-watching, having also brought our back packs with books, journal paper and Aisling's knitting. Dismayed, we looked around and saw that we had no choice but to stand, not such a happy choice for me and my dumb Achilles tendon. I knew if I sat on the grass, I'd never be able to get up again. Aisling sat for awhile, but got up again when she'd nearly been stepped on or tripped over for the fiftieth time.

The four of us had a little trouble finding one another (we realized too late that Meelyn's waist pack should have also contained her cell phone), but we found each other at noon. Aisling and I presented Meelyn with a pink t-shirt that reads "I FINISHED!" on the back and she was very touched and grateful.

Did I mention I was proud?

As she pulled her shirt over her wet hair and beaming face, I wondered how long it would take her to remember that volleyball season starts in six weeks.

I think I'll not mention that to her just yet.