Monday, May 4, 2009

Success!

This past Saturday, I ran the Indy Mini! Woohoo! It was 13.1 miles, and my friend Sarah and I ran all but 2miles...maybe a little more that we walked. It was so great. I had 2 goals going into it: 1. Finish and 2. Don't get forced to ride the bus (they have a bus that you have to ride if you can't keep pace.) And we did it!

There were 35,000 people there running and walking with us. It was incredible! We saw so many different people:
  • Father and son (I saw these 2 with matching shirts. On the back it had their names, and on the dad's it said "20th mini" and on the son's it said "1st mini." How cool is that?
  • Firefighters. We saw groups of firefighters in full gear: masks, hats, boots, air, and everything. It made me wonder if they were completing the mini in memory of someone or just to build community among their team.
  • A group of teenage girls dressed up as ninja turtles (AWESOME)
  • An older man running, and pushing his wife in a wheelchair.
It really was an incredible experience. There was also just a great sense of community among the runners. Obviously the people at the front of the pack were the seasoned runners, able to finished in just over an hour. So many of them, after they had finished running, came back out and lined the course to cheer everyone else on. There was one girl in particular that was so great! We were 1/2 mile from the end and were taking a short break before we finished running. She saw us from the side and started cheering for us by name (our names were on our Bibs) and encouraging us to keep going and start running. So cool that someone who had probably finished a good hour before us took the time to come back and cheer her fellow runners on.

I know I asked myself many times if I was crazy for doing this....and to be perfectly honest, yea I think I kind of am. But I really did enjoy it, and am excited to keep working and hopefully run again next year and set and accomplish some new goals!

1 comment:

Shannon said...

Congrats Danni! I'm so proud of you! It's a great feeling to accomplish something that seemed like such a challenge :)