When I was hit with MS in 1994, by the second day in the hospital, I could not walk. This year will be my 15^th consecutive Mini®. These blogs about the Mini® will be a combination of memories of doing the Mini® and advice, based on those memories, of how to do it. I had no clue, in 1999, about the proper approach to the race. All advice given in this, or any other column, is not given as a healthcare professional. I do not have the formal training received by M.D.s, so check with your physician before the Mini®. 

Before the start, part 2.

   If you bought new shoes for the race, you needed to break them in at least a full week before. Blisters are a killer. Buy some good socks, too. They are a good investment. At mile eight or nine, every little bit of comfort helps. This year rain is in the forecast. Water in the shoes can mean blisters. If you hear any words of wisdom on how to protect yourself against this problem, double-check those words. What you choose to do will be with you for 13.1 miles and a lot of time.

   Because of the Boston Marathon bombings, there are a few new rules in the Mini® and old rules, not previously enforced, may receive attention. I try to take along some kind of self-entertainment. The race rules say nobody can wear headphones. As a lawyer, I believe that provision was inserted by the legal team of the Mini® for no clear reason. I never have seen that rule enforced. About a third of the participants usually are in violation—it can get boring out there, mile-after-mile. Make sure the wire to the headphones—or ear bugs or whatever they call them today—are out of the way of your arms. You can easily snag the wires and personal entertainment devices go flying. Also, if your personal entertainment device is battery-operated, take along a spare set.    Choice of music: something with a good bet helps your pace. I have found "Machine Head," by Deep Purple, as an album (recorded in the early 1970s, "album" is the proper term), gives a good beat for a fast pace. If you wear shades it is helpful to have one of those cords that attach to each stem and wrap around your neck.

   Also—there is water on the course and the volunteers who work the water (and Gatorade®) stops are great. But sometimes you will get thirsty and there is not a stop for a while (or, near the end of the course, the water stations either have run out of H20 or the folks are breaking down the gear and heading home). It is nice to have mini-thermos bottles on a utility belt as a last resort, but there may be restrictions this year on those. You should check the rules.

   I will wear shorts for the race itself, even though the forecast currently calls for a temperature of 54 early and cloudy. It probably will get warm. That’s why people peal off sweatshirts and sweatpants and toss them to the side right there at the start of the race. And try to wear apparel that doesn’t chafe. The wrong material in a shirt can hurt after a few miles of sweat.

   A few years ago the Indianapolis 500 Festival® started giving out caps. I have MS and direct sunlight is bad for me. The course can get extremely hot. The caps they give out provide for air to flow through side material with perforations. They also are light-weight. I prefer to wear a wide-brimmed hat. That is why (not because I want to be stylin’ out there) usually I wear a Panama hat with the same kind of perforated sides as the caps given out in your race package. I have a Stetson® jungle hat with the same wide brim but more solid material that I have worn years when rain has been predicted for the race. That probably will be my head gear tomorrow.

   Find your way to your stall and move up (if you are not there already) to the rope that separates your stall from the stall in front of you. As I said yesterday, you want to get to the track as soon and as early as possible.

After the first mile.

   I began to feel confident. People wear all sorts of shirts. A lot are the year’s shirt given out with the race packets. (I’d say "given out ‘free’ with the race packets," but you are paying for that shirt.) The shirts, however, are long-sleeve and more appropriate for training than for the race itself. Some shirts are from other races—past years’ of the Mini® or other half- or full marathons. Other shirts are of the category of dedication to loved ones or friends who have passed away. Others are declarations of religious conviction. Whatever works for someone—fine. I liked the one that said, "I may be slow, but I’m ahead of you."

   Drink water at the first stops. The rule of thumb (or body tissue) is that is you feel thirsty, you already should have been drinking. I like to drink a cup or two of Gatorade® when it is available (and it is at a few of the stops).

   Be careful at the water stops. Think of traffic on Pit Row during the Indianapolis 500®. The same principles apply. People are trying to weave in, grab water, and pull out. Traffic’s heavy. Also—IMPORTANT—discarded cups on the ground and get slippery when covered with a lot of splashed water. You do not want to fall down, and then suffer the indignity of having someone walk over the top of you.

   You settle into a rhythm. What I found helpful when I walked for time was to find someone who was shooting for about the same pace (you can tell after while who is moving at what speed) and "draft" that person. That person sometimes gets paranoid. More often s/he realizes someone is drafting and it turns into something of a race, and then you converse. If you are doing the Mini® with a friend, this point is moot, maybe.

   Then you turn right off of tenth and onto Main Street in Speedway. Usually a couple of groups of cloggers are there dancing. At the end of Main is 16^th. Just ahead lies the Indianapolis Motor Speedway®. If you have managed your water intake properly, you do not have to use the restroom. You will see the course officials waving people to the left and looking to make sure people have their bib numbers on. You go under the short chute between turns one and two. The air is cooler there but the slope is steep going down and again back up. Then you break out into the infield next to the track’s museum.

   Now is the big challenge: the track.   

IMS®.

   The course crosses part of the infield and enters the track just outside Turn 2. Look ahead of you: it looks relatively easy. What? One three-quarters of a mile? Then it seems to get longer. At this point you should be really conscious of drinking water at the water stops. If you need to cool off radically, take off you cap or hat, lean your head back, and pour water on your head.

Important:

   When pouring water on your head, don’t get any in your shoes. The same holds true for the well-meaning people a couple of places along the course who spray garden hoses on race participants. Steps around the spray. Water in the shoes gets socks wet and can cause blisters. Back to IMS®.

   One appreciates how really long the turns are when one has to walk those turns. You enter three, stay low, go through the short-chute, move through four, and come out on the main straightaway. This is Indy®. On the left is the Tower and, on both sides, way up there, all those suites. The walk has become something of a death march by now—especially if the day is warm and sunny—and each step is an effort. Be aware that, as you get about 20 yards from the "Yard of Brick"®, the Indianapolis 500 Festival® has photographers stationed on a catwalk spanning the track. Look up at them, smile, and wave. The last few years I hold up my fingers to indicate how many in a row this is for me. Otherwise, year-to-year with my hat and other attire, I can’t tell the difference.

   I always like to walk across the rectangle, marked on the asphalt, where the car of the pole-sitter will rest on the grid on Race Day®. That way, when we watch the 500 on TV, I have a connection with everything.

   Between turns three and four, the past two or three years, my knee has started to hurt horribly. There is nothing I can do about that, of course, except continue to walk.

   You exit the track just outside of Turn Two. You follow a circuitous driveway around to the right (an area in which DePauw, my alma mater, has had a water stop the last few years), and get a couple of slugs from a Gatorade® stand. Then you are back out on 16^th Street going East before a right to wind around the Marathon Oil® fuel depot. Then comes Mile 9, what for me, in the past, has been a difficult point of the race. I am exhausted. My knee aches. But the distance to the end is the same as I walked each morning when I began morning walks. As you turn onto Michigan, look ahead and you will see tens of thousands of people as nutty as you are for doing this. This is a very long stretch. Mile 10 is a long way in coming. Mile 11 takes even longer to appear. You can’t make sense of the time because you no longer can calculate your time subtracted from the original starting time. Your mind is altered. People you recognize as having passed earlier, now pass you. As did the Andrettis, you are slowing down. But keep one foot moving in front of the other. Grab another cup of water.

    You turn right onto the White River Parkway. You’re almost there.

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