Joggling the Indianapolis Monumental (Half) Marathon

Last year post-race
Courtesy of Laura Neidig and Indianapolis Monumental

This weekend I returned to Indy to run their annual Monumental Marathon. Last year the race caught my attention after posting wanting some entertainment during the race. Now they do a 5k, 10k, half, and full marathon. I had done several 5k's and 10k's so I thought I'd mix it up so I messaged them saying if they wanted I could juggle the half marathon (13.1 miles). With very little experience at long distance running I impressed even myself by running the course in about 2:03.

This year however, (yes, here come the excuses...) I was even more out of shape and battling a cold all week. Luckily, there were two kleenex stops along the course! They were prepared for everything! While driving to Indianapolis I ran into the "s-word" along the way. Snow that is. Although I think I did step in the other s-word too.

All the runners were quite trepidatious about the cold weather and prepared accordingly. If you've ever watched a big, long race you'll see people dressed in all sorts of fancy layers of running clothes stripping them off once they start exerting enough body heat. I'm the guy behind them checking to see if they dropped anything in my size.

Being a guy juggling three balls for the duration of the course makes it a little tough to remove clothes so I just stuck to a long sleeve shirt, shorts, and leggings. I have to thank Laura Neidig, one of behind-the-scene ladies to the event for providing me with gloves to wear during the race. If it wasn't for her I probably would still have my hands thawing in a pot of boiling water right now.

During race photo courtesy of Sarah Gibson

Needless to say I didn't PR but that doesn't matter because it's still good PR to just be a part of such a huge race and joggling in it. I think my finishing time was somewhere around 2:17 but I'll have to check on that.

Indy is still one of my favorite cities to run in. Anywhere with that flat of a course is definitely a plus and the race is extremely well-organized. I can't think of a race with customized bibs, a participant T-shirt, finisher medal, Jimmy-John's, and chocolate milk after the race.

Not only did they have an incredibly good-looking, yet extremely modest guy like me running the race while juggling but they also had a 92-year old marathoner, a 17-year old soon-to-be Olympic medalist I'm sure, and an amputee all running the race.

Definitely inspiring and pushing me to get back on the treadmill until next year.

Thanks Indy!