Stuffed in a chute with more than 3,000 other athletes on the streets of Louisville, I closed my eyes and turned off all of my senses.

Bowing my head to my chest, for a moment, I was alone in the darkness among a sea of bodies. Not a scary place, but one that was calm and controlled.

When I came back to reality, the Churchill Downs bugler was on a stage to my left in his usual red and white attire buzzing the famous derby tune “Call to Post” through his trumpet as the sun rose.

After 12 weeks of training, the time had come to conquer the 13.1-mile course.

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The conditions on Fourth Street were perfect: 50 degrees with no rain.

Like the thoroughbreds at the Kentucky Derby, the ground shook as the feet started picking up pace.

In all honesty, the first 6 miles of the race are a bit of a blur from Saturday. There was a lot of adrenaline in those opening minutes.

What I remember most is that, like I expected, I came out way too fast.

My opening mile was around eight minutes — almost two minutes faster than my expected pace.

I flowed with the pack instead of worrying about myself.

Once I dialed it back, re-establishing my breathing and pace, I started taking in some of the sights on the run: the KFC Yum! Center, Whiskey Row, the Ohio River and Louisville Slugger Field.

From there, the trail went through Cherokee Park, which I would guess made up around 50 percent of the course. Most all of the park was wooded, and along the course, there were small bands playing bluegrass music.

I felt fantastic through the first half of the race.

When I trotted past the clock at the halfway point, the time read 1 hour, 1 minute. I was on a 9:28 pace. My dream scenario was a sub-2-hour finish.

As good as I felt, I knew I wouldn’t stay at that clip.

Almost everything up to that point was downhill, and I had some slopes ahead. Somewhere between miles 7 and 10, the hills became much steeper.

On those inclines, you could see which runners took their training the most seriously.

There were a lot of people who stopped and rested on the hills because of how tough they were and where they were on the course.

In my opinion, miles 7 through 9 are the toughest. Mentally, you know you know you have 4 or 5 miles to go even though you’ve already been on the road for around an hour.

I didn’t break my stride.

Once I got past the hills, it was smooth sailing — outside of the gusting headwind.

The final 3.1 miles were through neighborhoods before coming back into downtown.

I don’t know what got into me, but on the final straightaway, I sprinted the final 100 yards back into downtown.

Either I wanted it to be over or I wanted to make sure every last bit of me was left on the course.

When I hit the finish, I put both hands on my head, and a wave of joy and relief swept over me.

There was never a doubt that I could make it to the finish. I trusted the process, but you never know what something like a half-marathon will be like until you run it.

My final time was 2 hours, 9 minutes, 16.47 seconds. I placed 1,251 of 3,306 finishers.

At the end, I grabbed one of those tinfoil space blankets, a banana, chocolate milk and bottled water.

Sifting through the crowd, I found my girlfriend and my dad, who made the trip down from New York to see me finish, and regained my composure.

My phone had blown up when I was gone with messages from friends and family from across the country.

I think that is what meant the most, knowing you have a bunch of people in your corner.

In that race, I never walked. I ran the entire way without stopping, which was another one of my goals.

The after-party amplified the entire experience. There were plenty of food and libations around, and a band played up until noon in the middle of Fourth Street Live!

Feeling great, we drove up to a farm back in Indiana and picked up pumpkins and got some apple cider doughnuts.

The tiredness started to settle in after that.

I had been up since 4:30 a.m., and it was almost 2 p.m. I got to the race one and a half hours early, wanting to make sure that we didn’t get stuck in any traffic.

When I got back to the car, that one line from the movie “Forrest Gump: went through my mind: “I’m pretty tired. I think I’ll go home now.”

Once I arrived at my apartment, I fell facedown and napped until dinner.

By the day’s end, my GPS watch read that I had gone 19 total miles between the race and walking. That is the most mileage I’ve covered in a single day in my entire life.

Waking up the next day, I was stiff, but not to the point where I couldn’t walk. I felt surprisingly good, and once I stretched, I could get around just fine.

On Sunday, my dad and I went to see the Colts play my hometown Buffalo Bills up in Indianapolis. Dad hadn’t seen the city before, so we walked around all of downtown. We actually ended up going 5 total miles despite the long day before hitting the city.

What more could I have asked for in a weekend? Everything went almost exactly as I had hoped.

The first line I typed in this series of columns was, “I made either the smartest, or dumbest, commitment in years.”

On Wednesday, I laced back up for the first time since the half-marathon and retraced the first route I ran 12 weeks ago — not a regret in the world.

Jordan Morey is the sports editor at The Tribune. Over the past 12 weeks, he trained for his first half-marathon, which was Oct. 20. This is the fifth and final installment of the series. Send comments to [email protected].