Another Visit to the Carmel Marathon

Brian Johnson (MM8807, HF7287, DA707) -Carmel Marathon Recap

Marathon 49

Carmel Indiana Full Marathon

State 25(and holding)

April 13, 2024

I only really started to consider this race after the debacle at the Air Force Marathon Last September. I had completed the marathon 2 years ago. I don’t usually repeat a race.

I signed up at the Indianapolis Monumental Marathon and got a free shirt out of the deal.

I had this race in my sights for a while.

Fast forward a couple months and a few life events later (new car/job) it was marathon weekend.

Living in Columbus, Ohio, it was a short 3-hour drive over to the expo on Friday for a Saturday race.

The expo was pretty small. I did get to meet Merry Mullins along the way. She is constantly on the go running marathons!

The Marathon Maniacs family usually tries to take a “family picture” before a run. There were 2 total that weekend, at both the expo and before the race.

Race day.

This past running season, 2 of my friends, Molly and Erika, were preparing for a marathon. Molly’s first and Erika’s 5th marathon. We had run all training season with Marathoner in Training.

We had made plans to meet up on race day and to help each other finish the race.

Race morning was cold. It was in the 40’s. The day got a lot better once the sun came up.

The Half Marathon has a much larger group of runners than the full marathon. The full marathon only had a little over 1700 runners complete it, the nice part is, the only real hills are the bridges that you occasionally cross.

I got the privilege of running with Karen Murray Anderson on the course for a few minutes. It was great to be able to chat with her.

Along the course there are the occasional fun spots. The best was the “Jurassic Park” area after mile 7.

This course is a 2-loop course. The first loop goes around the east part of town. The second loop goes around the west part of town. They meet in the middle around mile 11/24.

The most disheartening came around mile 11. I had been running for 2 1/2 hours at that point and the really speedy marathoners were finishing their 24th/25th mile heading toward the finish.

The second loop was very quiet. There wasn’t a lot of crowd support except for Alex. Alex was everywhere helping cheer on Erika, Molly, and me. Every time we saw him, he had a new sign and treats. .

Alex, you were greatly appreciated that day.

All running season I had been focusing more on the half marathon distance with the training groups. then going out later to pick up extra miles.

That both helped me and hurt me on race day. My time in the first half of the race was really good. It was much better than anything last fall.

When I hit about mile 16, I realized that my undertraining on the long game was going to cost me. I walked the last 10 miles in.

I did try to run on occasion, but my knee hurt, and I knew if I kept trying that I would create a problem.

Based on how the training season went, I figured Molly and Erika would have been a few minutes in front of me all day. It turns out, I stayed a few minutes in from of them until almost mile 20.

It was a nice feeling to get back on to the bike trail at mile 23 1/2 and know that I was going to finish the day and not be swept from the course. When you are a back of the pack runner, that is one of your fears.