Talking Icebreaker

Last night, I had another meeting for the Icebreaker Indoor Marathon at the Pettit Center. Before the meeting, I met Dana for a run. It was a nice day, maybe 52F out, little wind, and starting to get dark. I plotted a course to run which was to go on the new Hank Aaron Bike Trail. Dana showed up right at 4:30, changed and went into the ice arena area to run laps on the track. Oh well, so much for checking out the new trail.

Dana is a considerable faster runner than I am but he runs with me if he doesn’t care about his pace. We ended up running 18 laps (5 miles) at 8:05 pace which actually felt not hard. It wasn’t easy, but not hard. More like a pace run. It was all good and we got done in plenty of time for the meeting.

The meeting went well. It is a lot of fun being on the committee and giving my input as to how we should put on the race. It is a lot of work, but fun. Something new we are doing this year is having a different shirt for the participants of the Full and Half Marathons. Instead of the usual technical short or long sleeve shirt that most of us only use when we are running, we are having a rugby style long sleeve shirt. One that you can wear when you go out with friends or to the store or even just lounging around. If you are like me, you have lots of technical shirt, more than you know what to do with. We know there will be participants who will gripe and complain about it, but we think the majority of the runner will like the change. All of the committee members are runners and we all like it.

The meeting went well. The full marathon is already full. The half marathon had 15 spots left as of yesterday. There were plenty of spots open for the marathon relay but we know that all 100 spots of that will fill up. Of all the races, I think the relay has the biggest buzz and excitement. There are over 300 runners along the outside of the track cheering on their teams and exchanges going on all the time. The unique part of this marathon relay is that a team can exchange as many times as they want to. If teams wanted to run 1 lap at a time and then exchange, they can do it. It is fun seeing the strategies involved in this.

Today, I was able to squeeze in 5 miles while my girls were at messengers (equivalent to Girl Scouts). It went pretty good. I felt fast again though I know I wasn’t going that fast. I will probably not be able to run again until Monday but I think I have enough miles in for the week. I think I am near 25 miles and since I have another marathon in just over a week, I am good with it.

If you are local and want in on the Icebreaker, I suggest you sign up quickly. If you are not local, maybe you would like to think about coming to Milwaukee next winter and trying it out. It is a real blast!

By the way, I have now seen 3 more houses with Christmas lights. I did have someone suggest that it may be Diwali Lights. As much as I would like them to be that because at least they would be the right time, I can say with almost certainty, that they are in fact Christmas Lights.