Today was the inaugural Red Dress Dash here in Indianapolis. The American Heart Association has done these in other cities and I’m glad they gave us a shot at one.
I’m a big fan and supporter of the Heart Association since my family history runs deep with heart disease. My Dad’s aorta ruptured when he was 47 so I grew up watching him deal with the complications from the disease. My Mom has had quadruple bypass surgery; the 6th of her 9 siblings to need surgery. And my oldest brother has had 2 heart attacks and has 3 stent already. He is 57. I’ve got a lot of card stacked against me and that is one of the reasons I run.
I only found about this event on Thursday but I soooo wanted to be a part of it. There was no registration fee and it was merely a “dash” around Monument Circle downtown. It soundly like a fun way to start the day. I don’t have a red dress and didn’t feel like shopping at Goodwill but I figured I could use my red skirt from the Santa Hustle and find a little T-shirt to go with it. Sadly, I didn’t have much luck finding anything. I was looking for something with hearts but they were all to “Valentine-y” so then I remembered I had an old plain red shirt that surely I could do something with.
Well, I wouldn’t want to rush in to working on that so Sunday evening at 8pm, I began. I felt like I was back in college needing to pull an all-nighter. But since I had worked with the glue and gems before it didn’t really take that long.
Woke up Monday morning at 6:00am (way too early for me) to the sound of rain. UGH! I didn’t really want to run in the rain but the extended forecast showed that it was moving out of the area.
Got to the Emmis Communications building at 7:50, signed in, got my goodie bag and then waited. I thought this thing was to start at 8:00am but I guess it was 8:30 or 8:45. It was fun to people watch and there were tons of guys there (including some fire fighters) dressed in red dresses. They had coffee, Subway sandwiches and lots of freebies to pick up. I grabbed some lip balm and also had my picture taken in the photo booth.
We were corralled outside for the dash. They sounded the horn and we were off. People could do whatever they wanted; run, walk, skip. I was near the front and took off with a slow jog keeping an eye on the people in front of me. About halfway around the circle those faster folks had started walking. It was the classic tortoise/hare scenario. I ran past two people, then three more people and by his time we were 3/4 of the way around the circle. I could see that they had moved the “start line” over and it was now a finish line. I could also sense that one of the guys that I had passed was trying to catch up so I flipped on the afterburner.
Needless to say he did NOT catch me and I finished first.
There was no prize for doing so other than the satisfaction that I did. But I am hoping to find some video of it from one of the news stations.
And this really wasn’t a competition…YEAH, RIGHT!
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