I am not much of a shopper. You might say I am like water and shopping is like oil. We just don’t mix. I can think of almost a million things I would rather do than go shopping.
When I think back to so many of our family celebrations on Thanksgiving Day, I can vividly recall many of my cousins sitting around the table after our meal as they looked through the ads that had been inserted into the newspaper.
They were like coaches before the big game. They were scouting each store and coming up with their game plan — their plan of attack on Black Friday.
Each year at least one of them would ask if I wanted to go shopping with them, and each year I’d decline.
No thanks … not for me.
But there was a Black Friday deal that caught my attention this year — a special that I came across as I was deleting emails the day after Thanksgiving that had filled my inbox.
“A Black Friday Deal is Here,” the subject line teased.
Normally, I would have kept deleting. This email, however, was from the organization that hosts the Indianapolis half-marathon each May.
I ran my first half-marathon in college and enjoyed it so much that I did it back-to-back years. Several years passed before I started running long distances again. From 2013 up until COVID-19 canceled the race in 2020 and 2021, however, I found myself in Indianapolis the first Saturday of May to join thousands of others to run a half-marathon.
It became one of my favorite spring traditions each year. When COVID canceled the race in 2020 and 2021, I stopped running such long distances.
I had hoped to run the race in May 2022, but I caught a case of the coronavirus that winter and it took a couple of months to catch my breath after I recovered — literally. Once again, COVID canceled the race for me.
In May 2023, however, my hope is to be back in Indianapolis on the first Saturday of May to run the race with thousands of others from around the world.
The Black Friday special that I found in my email inbox encouraged would-be participants to sign up with an incentive of receiving a free Indy Mini “exclusive” cozy beanie to wear during the impending Indiana winter.
A few clicks later, my wife and I were signed up for this year’s race — the half-marathon for me and the 5K for her.
Run a 13.1-mile race and earn a beanie. That’s a good deal, right?
Three years have passed since I have run that far and since I have trained for a half-marathon. The 13-week three-day-a-week training will officially begin during the first week of February, but I think I need to start a bit earlier since the longest distance I have run in one setting since 2019 is half of the distance I’ll need to cover in May on race day.
I have always enjoyed a good challenge, and taking a three-year hiatus will certainly make this year’s race more difficult — and perhaps more rewarding — than the last few.
If you’re looking for a similar challenge in 2023, consider joining me and thousands of other runners, joggers and walkers in the Hoosier capital in May. It’s a weekend that you won’t forget.
jdpeeper2@hotmail.com
