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Two weekends ago, I ran the Indianapolis 500 Festival Mini-Marathon, which is very similar to a casual Saturday morning jog except that it is 13.1 miles and there are 34,999 other people doing it with you. Also, the average Saturday morning jog does not usually include a lap around the track at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, home of the Indianapolis 500.

There are many of you out there who are currently wondering why on earth someone would deliberately run that far. I’m thinking, for example, of a good friend whose general policy on running is “only when I’m being chased.” People who climb mountains, which is a similarly insane undertaking, can always fall back on the classic justification, “Because it’s there.” The trick with 13.1 miles, though, is that it’s always there. No really, it is. Go look outside right now, and you will see, sitting innocently on your very own street, the beginning of 13.1 miles. “Because it’s everywhere” doesn’t really work as a justification, does it?

For now, let’s consider how to run 13.1 miles. First you’ll need to prepare. Here’s what you might do:

1. Ten years prior, have major reconstructive knee surgery. This will ensure that your knees hurt one out of every six times that you jog, but not in any predictable pattern.

2. Two years prior, run the Mini with your girlfriend, who is a dedicated career jogger. Prepare insufficiently. She will totally kick your ass and your wheels will fall off at about mile ten, but you will finish without stopping or dying. Barely.

3. 12 weeks prior to 0 weeks prior: run a lot.

With those key preparations in place, I arose at six o’clock Saturday morning and made my way downtown with 35,000 other curiously motivated persons. Upon emerging from my car, I reached a crucial decision point. I was wearing shorts, a t-shirt, and a long sleeved t-shirt. It was a chilly May morning, forty five degrees and mostly cloudy, with a projected high of about fifty three during the course of the race. To wear the long-sleeved t-shirt or not to wear it? Drawing on the wisdom gleaned from Miss Staton’s seventh-grade “Skills for Living” class, I mentally sketched out a quick decision tree, but since it was seven o’clock on a Saturday morning, the tree appeared in my mind looking like a wadded up McDonald’s bag. I went with the simplest decision: I am cold at this moment; I will wear the long sleeved t-shirt.

I waded towards the starting area through the crowd of stretching, jogging and hydrating runners. Most of them were not wearing long sleeves, but most of them also looked like they were freezing. Fools! Warm-elbowed, I slipped into the mass of people waiting to start, and I am not exaggerating when I say mass:

I don’t normally love crowds, but it was excellent to be in the tightly-packed street, waiting for the show to get on the road. The 7:30 start time was fast approaching, and the energy was ramping up, all of us runners ready to get out on the course. The sorts of emotions that are shared with thousands of complete strangers are compelling in their own specific way, and that’s probably one of the many reason to run the Mini. Who says mob mentality is a bad thing?

As the starting gun went off, we all began to walk slowly forward towards the starting line, which was about four blocks away from where I was standing. When you spread that many people out over the width of a city street, it takes a long time to get to the starting line. This is why everyone has a little microchip tied into one shoelace that tells the computers when they’ve actually crossed the starting line. The chip also enables the friendly people at Brighthouse photography to organize, distribute, and sell the millions of digital images they take of runners on the race course:

Fourteen minutes later, I finally passed through the starting gate and started jogging. The sky was clear, the temperature was perfect, and there were cheering crowds lining both sides of the street. This is another of the great reasons to run the Mini. For whatever reason – I’d like to think human kindness, but voyeuristic curiosity is probably a big factor too – the citizens of Indianapolis turn out in very large numbers along many areas of the course to cheer on thousands of complete strangers. This really helps you, for instance, at mile twelve, when you mainly want to lay down on the hot asphalt and take a nap for several hours. At mile one it is certainly nice, but the energy can get you a little jacked up and possibly running beyond your desired race pace. I saw this in action two years ago when I ran with my girlfriend, whose internal cruise control is steadier than my car’s. While she kept us at a consistent pace, hundreds of over-psyched joggers flew past with reckless abandon, only to return painfully to reality a few miles later when the adrenaline wore off and the conditioning kicked in. This year, job obligations prevented her from being there, so I was on my own in terms of pace. As such, I made an effort not to overdo in the first mile, hoping that I would be able to stick right around my target pace of nine-minute miles. I jogged on, feeling quite good about life, especially considering that it was seven forty on a Saturday morning. I had very little pain my temperamental knee, my lungs weren’t taxed, the long-sleeved t-shirt still seemed to be the right choice, and as we passed the Indianapolis Zoo, I’ll swear that Kubwa the Elephant waved his trunk at me in encouragement. Or possibly he was just reaching around to scratch his enormous ass. In the midst of wondering whether or not an elephant’s trunk is long enough to reach his ass, I crossed mile marker one. Looking down at my watch, I saw that I had completed the first mile in...10:40. Oops. This would explain why I wasn’t winded at all. Time to pick up the pace.

Another good reason to run the Mini is the hilarious variety of live music that can be found along the race course. The race’s official website lists seventy-nine entertainers for the 2006 event, from Dr. Rhythm to Il Troubador: Indy’s 16th Century Rock Band to Muddshovel. During mile two I passed the best band of the day, which consisted of two Middle Eastern gentlemen. One, a great fat man wearing sunglasses, was strumming intensely on a tiny stringed instrument, the apparent Middle Eastern equivalent of a ukulele. His partner, a short skinny guy, was sitting on a wooden chair and sawing away with great ferocity on a stand-up bass. They were each plugged into an amplifier and were singing quite loudly in unison. The monotone lyrics to their strange and frantic tune were, as far as I could tell, “La la la la la la la la la!” Mile two was a happy mile thanks in part to these dedicated musicians. (Note to judgmental persons: If two Americans decided to take their American cover band on the road and play the Cairo Ramadan Festival Mini-Marathon, I would be disappointed if the Egyptian joggers didn’t find them incomprehensibly funny.)

It was also during mile two, a whole sixteen percent into the race, that my temperature rose enough that the long-sleeved shirt because too warm. As I tried to simultaneously run and re-attach my race number to my short sleeved shirt without inducing stigmata via safety pin, the short-sleeved runners around me all smirked slightly, I’m sure. The sensible act would simply have been to abandon the shirt, but my Midwestern sense of guilt and fiscal discipline would not allow it. After all, t-shirts cost money, and you can’t just go throwing them away like trash. I tied that sucker around my waist and carried it, albatross-like, to the bitter end.

By mile three, the preponderance of bands pounding out post-grunge/depresso-hardcore music was becoming a bit dreary. Crappy covers of Korn and Puddle of Mud did inspire me to run, but mainly just to get away from them. What was truly inspirational, however, was running by a black preacher who had set up a small amp and microphone outside of his church and was cheering on/preaching to the runners: “You’ve got to mooo-vuh! You’ve got to run for Goh-ud! Let him carry ya foh-wahd! Up-wahd! On-wahd to your goal! Let Jeee-zus take ya to the end! Ay-men!” This was just fantastic. Many thanks to the right reverend. And for those of you scoring at home, I ran my first four miles as follows:

Mile One: 10:40
Mile Two: 9:00
Mile Three: 9:40
Mile Four: 8:40

Yes, I am the very model of consistency.

The next few miles went by without much pain or drama. There was a lovely group of fifteen senior citizens in tap shoes and straw hats line dancing to DJ’ed country music, and lots of kids holding out their hands for high-fives from the runners. This is fun for both runner and kid, but probably resulted in a few battles later that evening between germ-conscious moms and “oh, they’ll be fine” dads.

During this stretch, I also paid some attention to the fantastic variety of running styles, which are as unique as fingerprints but much weirder. In my immediate vicinity I spotted Pigeon Toe Guy, Flailing Elbows Woman (pass with caution), Loping Wolf Girl, Technically Running But At A Walking Speed Man, and the somewhat baffling What The Hell Am I Doing Running This Far Eight-Year Old.

The next two and a half miles of the race took place on the venerable Indianapolis Motor Speedway track. For someone who has been attending the Indianapolis 500 for twenty years, this is a super cool place to jog. There are 250,000 empty seats staring back at you, and the size and scope of the speedway takes on a serene quality almost exactly the opposite of race day, especially when you are moving at 1/33rd the speed of an Indy car. Also, you get to jog across the famed “yard of bricks,” the start/finish line at the track, and make a ridiculous face at the race photographer:

There were no bands playing during this part of the Mini. Instead, there were local high school cheerleading groups scattered about, urging us on with inventive cheers such as:

Go! (clap, clap)
Go! (clap, clap)
Go, runners, Go!
(Repeats indefinitely)

In addition to the dynamic cheering, the speedway PA was spouting a collection of random top-forty hits from the last several decades. While Gloria Estafan is a miniscule improvement over, say, Muddshovel’s cover of Staind, you cannot jog away from Gloria if she is on the PA urging you repeatedly to join her in a conga-style dance maneuver. In an effort to drown out those sultry latin beats, I thought back through the myriad of bands I had heard to that point, searching out the catchiest, most memorable tune I could think of. I quickly settled on one, and for the rest of my time on the track the jukebox in my head urged me forward with the eternally inspirational “La la la la la la la la!” Great tune. I see a real future for those guys.

After leaving the track, I had nine miles behind me and four left to go. Life was good. The weather was beautiful (fifty-two, partly cloudy) my albatross shirt wasn’t holding me back, and neither of my kneecaps had exploded yet. I was, however, wary of the approaching ten mile barrier, which was where the wheels had fallen off so suddenly two years ago. Two events in quick succession distracted me from my concerns. First, I was bombarded by the Hoosier pop classics “Little Pink Houses” and “Jack and Diane” as I passed two Mellencamp cover bands within a hundred yards of each other. Second, we passed a hydration station at which about forty volunteers were passing out paper cups of Gatorade. Since it is impossible to effectively drink and run, there is quite a bit of spillage at these stations. After a water station, there is a great sound of running shoes splatting on wet pavement. After a Gatorade station, there is a chorus of, “shrik, shrik, shrik, shrik, shrik” as everyone’s feet become momentarily glued to the sticky pavement. This is a very strange sensation. It feels vaguely like the street is trying to swallow you, and will distract you from whatever you’re currently thinking about, be it Jack’s penchant for chili dogs or the upcoming ten mile mark.

After a stretch of very enjoyable musicians which included a happy-bouncy Phish cover band and a classic pickin’ and grinnin’ bluegrass group, there it was: Mile Marker Ten, looming Mordor-like on the horizon. As I passed under the giant orange number, I braced for impact with the Mini-wall that had nearly felled me two years ago. And ... nothing happened. As I jogged by the biker bar which annually hands out cups of cold beer to Mini participants (no thanks guys, but hey, nice tattoos), I realized that I was going to be okay. There were only three miles to go, and life was good. My kneecaps remained firmly attached to my body, my breathing was fairly normal, and I didn’t feel at all like death on a stick.

The rest of the race fairly flew by. At about mile 11.5 I passed a spectator who was yelling with cheerful optimism, “Keep it up! Only one more mile to go!” Apparently math skills are not a prerequisite for spectating a half-marathon. I also jogged by a middle-aged gentleman giving his running partner a pep talk not about the race, but about life in general, using phrases straight out of the Generic Corporate Motivation Handbook: “You’ve really got to keep actualizing your potential, strive for those prioritized goals, and maximize your personal productivity.” I suspect the recipient of this advice was silently wishing for a warm glass of shut the hell up to actualize on his friend.

Before I knew it I was on the home stretch, picking up the pace, passing nearly everyone in sight, and as I crossed the finish line to the general cheers of complete strangers, I checked my stopwatch and looked down to see that I had bested my previous Mini time by more than eight minutes, averaging 8:45 per mile. More importantly, I was tired and a little dazed but nowhere near dying, and could still walk and talk like a non-drunken, non-insane person.

The post-race corral is a long procession of people trying to hand you things. First, some very nice people handed me my official Mini Marathon medal, which this year looked like this:

The little race car in the middle spins around, and if you have just run 13.1 miles, you will want to flick it and watch it spin while saying, “wheeeeee,” which is what I did. After the medal, a lot of people tried to hand me a lot of different consumable items. I accepted a bottle of water, a Gatorade, a bag of chips, a banana, and an energy bar, but passed on the giant chocolate-chip cookie, which I think is a strange choice for post-race refreshment. As I munched on the chips, a cloud passed in front of the sun and a breeze blew. I was prepared for this chill, however. I untied the albatross shirt and put it on, complimenting myself for the brilliant foresight and planning.

As I walked back to my car, basking in the post-race endorphin rush and generally loving everything about life, I recalled a t-shirt worn by a runner that I had seen right after the finish line. It said, “Our sport is your sport’s punishment.” This is completely brilliant. If you’ve ever participated in organized sports, you know how true it is. For right now, though, running is not punishment. It used to be, for sure, but it has become a calming ritual, a time alone with an audiobook on an iPod, moving smoothly forward through sunlit space, putting the miles behind me. I don’t think I’ll be a lifelong jogging enthusiast, but for now I am certainly enjoying it. 13.1 miles is a pretty good hike, to be sure, but while I’m in this groove, I’ve decided to push the envelope a little bit. In October, my girlfriend and I will be running the Columbus (OH) Marathon. Hopefully I can keep up with her for 26.2 miles. Now that really is a long long way to run.