I don’t have a picture of myself crossing the finish line in this morning’s 500 Festival Training Series 5K because although my friends and family love me, none of them love me enough to wake up at 6:30 in the morning on a Saturday and stand in 40 degree weather at the finish line waiting for me to run 3.1 miles. Instead, here is a photo my mother brought me just last night, a photo I didn’t think existed, a photo of me crossing the finish line at my very first 5K last September.

I love how the girl next to me is casually checking her watch as I plow across the finish line with a grimace on my face in the hopes of shaving half a second off my time. This morning’s 5K is part of a series leading up the Indy 500 Mini-Marathon in May. Next month I run a 10K and the month after that a 15K. I ran this morning’s 5K in 31:17, a new personal record which beats my Irish Fest [...]

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“You’re going to have to kill me, bitch!” the man in a white t-shirt and jeans yelled as he dashed across the Quiznos parking lot. Was he talking to me? I had just opened the car door and my mother had just popped the trunk so I could stow away my backpack. Then we were going to have a light dinner before the Indy Irish Fest 5K run at eight o’clock. As a cop pursued the man across the street and another one dashed out of the Marco’s Pizza next door, I decided that, no, he wasn’t talking to me. Then I shut the door, locked it and begged my mother to roll up the windows.

“Maybe we should go somewhere else for dinner,” I suggested. A police car pulled into the parking lot with its sirens wailing.

“Are you kidding?” She replied. “This is the safest place in town. We’re surrounded by police.”

I just wanted to get to the Indy Irish Fest 5K, but I’d gotten stuck in the middle of the Escape the Fuzz 5K [...]

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