Santa Hustle Indianapolis HM

I wasn't going to write about this race, mostly because I treated it like a long run and I was waiting for me to run the Donut 5K to make a double race report, but I got a migraine the morning of that race and didn't run it, so here it goes.

On December 15, I ran the Santa Hustle Half Marathon in downtown Indy. The course starts at the American Legion Mall where the Vietnam and Korean War Memorials are located.The course takes us South and then back North for the most part, in similar fashion as the Indy Monumental race. The day was similar to Monumental with temps in the mid 20s with windchills in the teens and windy. We were supposed to get snow that day, but we were fortunate and the snow was delayed until later that day. Glad that happened because we got 7"+ of snow and not sure if the race would've been held had that occurred the night before.

I didn't do the packet pickup the day before, as I didn't want to head to downtown once again (as every day) just for a 5 minute packet pickup. So I elected to get there early, park at my office building, run to the packet pickup and back, and have my breakfast in my office. I didn't do this for Monumental because I didn't know if the parking and building passes would work but now that I know they do, I will be doing this often. It was nice to have a chair, a bathroom, and a kitchen all by myself.

After having my normal breakfast of Krispy Kreme and a Mtn Dew, I headed back to the start, finishing around 1.5 miles of warmup total.My stomach wasn't feeling very well, which is why I only had 3/4 of a donut and that came back to hunt me later.

The half marathon had fewer runners than I like, while the 5K had a lot more runners. We started at 10am, on time and off we went.

I started feeling OK, but my legs were sort of tired. I had been finally adding mileage to my training after months of low mileage and it showed. I wanted to run a bit faster than LR pace but by mile 3, I realized that was not a good idea, and around that time, I realized I had to go to the bathroom. Problem? There were no potta potties for 5 miles. In fact, the first water station was completely closed and there was no water for at least Mile 3ish. The RD apologized at some point because they lacked volunteers. Much of the water stations were unmanned and we had to get the water ourselves (They had served the cups at least).

At Mile 5, I see the potta potty and get in line. By the time I got out of it five minutes later, most of the people I was running with were gone and I was mostly alone. Thinking I was DFL (I wasn't), I started slowing down between my stomach and my legs being tired, but mostly mental being that I had no one to run "with"

Until a mile later, a guy just made a comment and we struck a conversation. We started run/walking together (I had been run/walking since Mile 4 since my legs were toast) and starting getting to know each other. His name was Miguel and him and his wife were running the half marathon (she was behind us). By the time we reached Mile 10 we were already friends. :)

There is not much to say about this race, other than we ran/walked and had fun, and talked about a lot of stuff. Here are some of the pictures I took through the race.

Me and Miguel:

 Heading to the finish:

With 0.30 miles to go, we started running. Miguel went ahead and I finished behind him at 2:46 and change. Which strangely, it's my fastest HM for 2019 and a full 41 minutes of what I did 2 years ago. Physically and mentally, I didn't have it that day. But it sure was a lot of fun!