Rainy and hilly. That’s the most succinct statement I can make about Saturday’s IU Mini Marathon.

Save for one nasty hill on Winslow Road on the southern part of the old route, I have found the IU Mini to be an enjoyable race in past years. Affordably priced, appropriately-sized, and well-organized, with a scenic course, it has been a good all-around event. We missed last year’s IU Mini because we were attending the long-anticipated wedding of some good friends of ours, but we returned this year to find some disappointing changes.

I was prepared for a revised course. However, with so many turns, I had no hope of memorizing the route, which was almost exclusively on the campus of Indiana University. The campus is pretty nice, and there is some nice scenery, but the Winslow hill that I did not like had been replaced by seemingly endless ups and downs on twisty campus roads. The entirety of miles 2 and 3 were up one long hill that banked to the right, obscuring the view of the course ahead. I thought several times that surely the summit was approaching, only to disappoint myself. At one point, I spotted a cell tower and thought that would be at the top of the hill, but no, it kept going for another half mile. With the cloudy sky, I became disoriented a number of times, not knowing which direction I was heading. It helps me to have a general idea of where I am, in addition to simply knowing how many miles remain to go. Instead, I just followed the shoes in front of me the whole way and watched the miles tick by slowly on my watch. I was a bit disappointed that the southern, off-campus portion of the course was removed, because it passed a number of nice neighborhoods with friendly people holding their morning coffee mugs, waving at their friends, students, and family. Even on campus, the fraternity and sorority houses were dormant.

Emily and I were both left with the impression that this year’s race was thrown together at the last minute. I did not hear the announcement before the start of the race, because the loudspeakers were not facing the starting corrals, but they warned that due to the Easter weekend, they were short on volunteers, and that some of the water stops might be self-serve. I appreciated the warning, and I can certainly understand that many of the people who would otherwise volunteer would be with family instead. One wonders, then, why they chose to hold the race that weekend. I did not find the shortage of water stop volunteers to be problematic, as I brought my own water bottle, in keeping with my goal of reducing water cup waste. If I remember right, only one water table seemed especially short handed. Fortunately there was adequate course coverage by safety officers.

There were some mixups with registrations and bib numbers at packet pickup, no banners at the start and finish lines, no national anthem sung prior to the start, no medals for 5k finishers, and the goodie bags were empty, save for a white IU Mini t-shirt. I mention these things not out of indignation, but because they were conspicuously absent this year, where previous years included these niceties. It just seems like there was more of a story behind all this besides a last minute shortage of volunteers.

So, the rain. We had kept an eye on the forecast, and were pretty confident that we would be able to finish before the rain came, and it wouldn’t be a lot of rain, at that. Not so. I do not remember exactly when it started, but probably only 45 minutes had elapsed. It rained progressively harder through the second half of the race. Of course, this was out of everyone’s control, and everyone pressed on. I escaped without any blisters, but one small nick from an adjacent toenail managed to dye my entire left shoe red because the rain helped spread the color. It vividly illustrated how well modern materials disperse moisture away from the skin. Two thorough washings with Simple Green the next day got the new shoes looking new again.

All told, the event was a mixed bag. We enjoyed visiting with friends, being together, and starting our little half marathon season, and we hope that next year’s IU Mini comes together as smoothly as it did for its first three years. Hopefully we will all be healthy enough to enjoy the 500 Festival Training Series 15k on Saturday and a long bike ride on the Cardinal Greenway in Muncie on Sunday. Next month we’ll have the Mini and the Geist Half marathons to look forward to!

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While at a trade show in Las Vegas this week, I participated in the inaugural Security 5k benefitting Mission 500, a charity founded by members of the security industry with the goal of sponsoring 500 children through the World Vision program. The organizers said they were expecting around 100 participants, however, 249 showed up on race morning. They had to start late in order to accommodate everyone who showed up. I’m glad to see a stronger than expected turnout, despite minimal advertising. However, with nearly 40,000 exhibitors and attendees, one would think that more publicity could yield significantly more than 249 runners. I tried to talk two others from my company into signing up, but they wisely did not show up. The night before was our annual rep and distributor meeting at a Las Vegas brewpub, and let’s just say that running was a bit unpleasant the next morning.

It was a cool, dry, and gusty morning. The wait before the race was quite gusty, though the wind died down a bit while we were running. The route was a “scenic” jaunt down Industrial Road, which is exactly what it sounds like. It was a busy six lane road servicing construction for new hotels and the hotels on the west side of the Strip on one side, and seedy nightclubs on the other. I realize that it is completely impractical to hold a race on the Strip because it is so busy. I did get a chance to run along the Strip early the day before. We also got to experience a freight train go by for a little fun. There were a couple incidents with impatient drivers trying to turn across the route or not paying attention to the traffic cones and mass of runners. The police had their hands full keeping things moving along smoothly, but they managed to do so.

I am not sure whether the race organizer plans to post official results on the web somewhere, but they did send results to participants via email. The editor of Security Systems News also has results in a blog post, but they’re not searchable. What I really would like to have seen would have been results associated with the companies represented. How many ways can my company find to beat the competition? We may not be huge, but we are respected in the industry, we are closing an excellent sales month, and we’re hiring. And we’re faster than all but nine others.

The race sponsors included lots of trinket trash in the post-race goodie bags, which I normally would not have taken, as I do not like throwing that much stuff away, and I was trying to travel light since I did not want to check my luggage after the last flight experience my family had. However, I took a goodie bag anyway this time because I thought it would be fun to take home some extra “what did you bring me” stuff to give to my son. Along the lines of trying not to throw so much stuff away, I also kept to my word and brought my own water with me so I didn’t waste water cups along the race route. It’s not much, given the excesses of the place where I was, but I tried to stay honest. It’s a good thing I brought my own water, too, since I needed a lot to balance the combination of the dry air and the effects of the previous night’s meeting. I hope that my thirst did not have too much of a negative effect on Lake Mead’s water level.

(Aside on water consumption: is it necessary to line a business park with bright green grass and palm trees? The landscaping in the area around my hotel used so much water that the bark on the palm trees was bleached and rotting away up to the levels of the sprinklers’ spray pattern. What part about “desert” doesn’t compute? After being full a decade ago, the Lake Mead storage has steadily declined to the point where it is less than 50% full right now.)

The last time I visited Las Vegas in 2007, I also serendipitously found a midweek race associated with a trade show. That one, I think, was for vascular surgeons. Of course I signed up and ran, but it was a very small production. There was no RFID timing, and I had left my GPS watch at the hotel. I had told some other people about the race who were at the show with my company, and one of my parent company’s Latin American representatives came along too. He was training for the Chicago Marathon at the time, and he was used to running at crazy altitudes in Mexico City. I was able to keep up with him for a bit, but then he poured on the gas and smoked me.

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