Marathon

It was so cold.  I wore shorts.  There were 9,000 people there, all standing around shivering together until we finally started the misery.  I tried to keep a nice steady pace, just running - didn't look at my watch every second to see if I was holding any particular time.  Indianapolis is a beautiful city.  The run took us through downtown north to Broad Ripple, then west to the Butler campus, through the IMA (Indy Museum of Art) campus, over toward the velodrome, then back to Meridian street, back downtown to the finish.  I hooked up with some guy for a while and we talked about this and that for several miles which was good.  It completely got my mind off the pain in my hips, calves, knees, etc.  He and I kind of grouped up with some women that were from the same running team - they were listening to us talk.  At mile 19 he couldn't hold the pace, so I wished him luck, thanked him for killing some miles with me, and started to go.  At mile 20 people started to walk, a lot of people.  Surprisingly I felt good, never walked.  I started to pass people en masse as they died out.  This improved my spirits greatly, and the fact that the pain was almost over.  At mile 22 the women that were listening to my conversation earlier passed me.  They were working as a team, counting off something.  I said "I'm sticking with you from here out".  They were on fire - the count was of the people we were passing, and it really did work.

I don't know what happens to women at this point of total physical exertion, but somehow the conversation lead to breast-feeding, more specifically breast pumping.  Thats right folks - one of the women in this group starts to tell us a story about her kids, and travelling, and needing to pump, etc, etc...and after a detailed build up she concludes that she got pulled over by the police while driving a car and breast pumping.  Not texting, pumping. 

For goodness sake.  I had to announce that I was married with two kids and 'we' breastfeed also, just to kind of join the circle.  I don't know about runners.  But that was one way to break the mental strain of those last 4 miles.  We nailed it, me and the girls.  I let them finish together in front of me all holding hands and stuff - we even high-fived afterwards.  It was fun.  The volunteers wrapped me in a big plastic wind-shield type blanket, then I walked to my car, changed my clothes in the parking garage, and drove home.