Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon 2014

OKC Marathon experience take #3! The weather at the start was anything but pleasant. The forecast in the days prior to the race called for some pretty bad weather, but it was better than forecasted. Hunter, Josh and I arrived at the Survivor's Tree around 5:30am. The race has a worship service before the start of the race so we prayed/worshiped together...there were about 70 people surrounding the tree. Once we finished the service it did start to rain a bit but not heavy. We arrived at the corral area and the announcer said the race would be delayed for 30 minutes due to weather moving into the area. Well after 30 mins we again made it to our corral location and again we were told the race would be delayed another hour due to weather. During these delays we managed to make it to a parking garage, which provided good shelter and keep us dry from the rain. After 2 hours of delays, we were finally racing...this would come back to haunt me later in the race. If you have read my other blogs on my marathon experiences, I always look for the funny costumes that people wear. This time it was the signs, and a few costumes.  The signs that were prevalent this year were: "Your the Sh#$"...I must have seen four or five people with that sign. LOVED IT! What a motivator! "Psalm 26.2". "If you need to poo, we have a vacancy in our house". There were more but those are the ones that stood out. For the costumes, I saw people wearing bananas at Gorilla Hill, but nothing else really stood out.

This year I ran the race in honor of Sydney Bjornberg. I blogged about her story in a earlier post so go back and take a look. Hunter, Josh and I all wore a shirt in her memory and throughout the race I had her on my mind, thinking of what she went through when she was diagnosed with a rare, terminal brain tumor – diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG).

So to the race itself. As I said earlier the delay before the start was a bit crazy, it was crowded the first 8 or so miles. The boys and I were making pretty good time. At the 3 mile point Hunter and his friend had to stop at a porta potty so we were split up for about 6 miles. Josh and I stayed together.  By the time we reached 11 miles, we ran into a good friend of mine Phil Singleton and his wife. It was great to get some crackers and water from them...we stopped for a few mins and just talked. Those crackers were VERY WELCOMED.

After the quick break we were off again. As we reached the turnaround point at mile 14, we suddenly realized just how fast the winds had been blowing. The first half of the race I really didn't notice the wind speed, but now we were directly into it and Oklahoma did not disappoint...it was about 25 MPH.

Around Mile 16 or 17 I started to realize that the 2 hour delay was going to be a factor in reaching the end of the race. I was really starting to feel tired in my legs etc. which is not the norm. I was taking advantage of all the water/gatorade stations. As we reached the later miles we started seeing more and more of them. I have always told people to take advantage of the stations. So I did that and continued drinking water...this would result in my downfall. You see drinking all the water caused me to develop severe stomach cramps at mile 22. The cramps were so bad that I could not run for more than a 1/2 mile before having to walk. From mile 22 to the finish I did just that.

I talked of the emotional part of this race. My goal for this race had nothing to do with time but more with finishing right next to my son Hunter. As the cramps developed and I was struggling, I started to have thoughts of DNFing and not coming across the finish line with him. Through it all we finished ironically at the exact same chip time...amazing considering how you run across the timing pads. I couldn't have been happier during that moment.