This was a just for fun half marathon in Indianapolis. Here's what I thought of it in 1995:
The first mile took about 11:30 to run. I ran with Ekkehard Gerndt and we
didn't cross the start line until 1:53. There were over 15,000 people there.
It took Dave Haushalter 20 seconds to cross the start line and then his first
mile was 6:20 (and he was complaining). He finished in 1:12:48 or something
close to that. The race was painless and fun. A good thing about starting
so far back with the slow people was that we were forced to go out easy. By
the time things thinned out enough to run at a decent pace were were doing
sub 7:30's and felt good. We were passing hundreds of people each mile. The
weather was pretty good, though it got hot and sunny near the end and I got
yet another sun burn.
By mile ten I was ready to go and felt good. So we
picked it up a little. Ekkehard didn't feel like going fast, but I was sucked
into the race aspect, even though I knew my time would suck. Mile 12 was a
6:17 and mile 13 was a 6:20 and I felt great, passing lot's of struggling
people, just the opposite of the end of Boston. My time was 1:39:12, not too
bad, but not too good. We took it was and I was able to get a decent kick.
After the race I ate and drank a lot and eventually found Dave at my
car. We parked next to the IUPUI gym and went in and got massages. My left
leg is hurt between the calf and heel. Not low enough to be a problem with my
achilles, but it's tight. Regardless of that I played two games of basketball
with Geoff Savage, Andy Hauger and Rob Davies when I got back to town. My jump shot was always
short, but I got a lot of offensive put backs and still managed to beat people
down the court. I only played two games before my leg hurt enough to convince me to stop.
Back to the Running Vita of James B. Elliott