500 Festival

Browse the photo gallery of shoes from Saturday’s race.

“Hopefully the word is out that I’m coming, and I’m looking to have some fun and enjoy the festivities,” he says.

The stars on hand picked favorites in Sunday’s running of the Indy 500, told stories, and shared laughs, all in high spirits the night before the Greatest Spectacle in Racing.

Drivers, celebrities, and more notables kicked off Saturday with a celebratory breakfast at 10:30 a.m. Without time to spare for digestion, they settled into their designated convertibles with significant others, family, and—in Helio Castroneves’s case—buddies. Pleased, Ms. Judd?

Indianapolis Colts punter Pat McAfee, no stranger to controversy and ever the huckster, even left his car at one point to take a photo with a fan sporting a shirt with McAfee’s “Boomstick” moniker emblazoned on it. And that was just about the biggest “incident” of the event, which was otherwise marked by periodic stop-and-go float traffic—horse droppings, you know.

About two thousand onlookers attended as Pence, Ballard, and General Daniel B. Allyn—who earlier this month became the 20th commander of the U.S. Army Forces Command—addressed the fallen, surveyed the present, and glanced at the future. “I wonder how many times that scenario has played out—the last hug, the last kiss before heading off to war,” says Mayor Ballard. “Sometimes, though, it really is the last war, the last kiss. And that is why we are here today.”

After the January interviews, the girls wait nervously for results that same evening from the judges. Good news is given to 66 finalists, who are scheduled for a final interview in early February.

The honor comes during a busy month for the team, many of whose players are returning from overseas stints with other clubs for the start of the 2013 WNBA season in San Antonio on May 24.

Music acts and costumes, belly dancers and superheroes—the Indy Mini has it all, with runners the world over all pushing themselves to the limit on the IMS track’s 2.5 miles of splendor and sweat. Then there are the other nearly 11 miles.

On the heels of their star turns in the 500 Festival parade today, celebrities in for the “Greatest Spectacle in Racing” took to the checkered carpet outside the Indiana Roof Ballroom. On the docket: the 2012 Snakepit Ball, with headlining performer Rick Springfield.

The stars aligned for the 500 Festival parade, which promised a fairly high celebrity quotient and did not disappoint. Floats and cars, bands and marchers—they all moved swimmingly along the route that started on Pennsylvania Street downtown, wounded around Washington Street and Monument Circle, and then proceeded up Meridian Street.

Since I ran the inaugural Indiana University Mini-Marathon on my 25th birthday in 2006, I have been slightly obsessed with half-marathons, and road races of all distances. I have now run three Indy Minis, as well as innumerable 5-milers and 5Ks, including the 2007 Indy Mini Day’s 5K, that just three and a half months after I was in a fairly serious car wreck.

What makes this Columbus institution really sweet is the counter-side charm of Wilma Hare and her fellow soda jerks, who will pull you an ice cream soda the way it was in 1900 and serve it with a side of sass: “When that ice cream hits the carbonation, it will explode like a volcano. And I will laugh at the look of panic on your face.”