2012 Tulsa Marathon
My third running of the William
Route 66 marathon and I was excited to run this year! One day before the race started and we were
in the car driving up to Tulsa and I was thinking about how the weather had
been amazing all week! Everyday of the
week would have been a great day for marathon it was 30ish in the morning and
warming up to around 40ish in the mid morning and very little wind. That is perfect weather for me to run a great
race and the weather was looking a little worse for Sunday morning in the 40s
and winds picking up to 15mph around 10am.
I wasn’t going to let that worry me to much because I had
trained hard and was ready to race! My
legs were feeling pretty bad at the first of the week because I hadn’t been
running as much. But this is always normal for me a week before the marathon.
So it is still Saturday and my wife
is on a mission to get some of her Christmas shopping done and I was glad to
sit outside in the beautiful sunshine and weather. So I set the seat back and
had a good cat nap, then onto the Expo I went and it seemed like forever since
I had been to an expo because I haven’t ran a marathon in a long time because
of the dang hot summer! The Expo was fun
I went running after a parachute dropped prize and could have jumped and got it
but didn’t want to steal it from a little kid!
I then waited in line to get a picture with my wife in the photo booth
and that was fun, always fun getting in a closet-like space with my wife.
Then we went back to the mall and I
entertained shopping for a little bit, which was a mistake. I didn’t enjoy it and probably should have
stayed off my legs I probably walked 2 miles in the mail and saw so many over
weight people, it was truly sad, I guess I don’t get out that much but it was
shocking in that moment to see so many in one place. Anyway got to get out of there and got to
meet up with my good friend Weldon that lives in Tulsa and we always stay with
him and go to dinner with him the night before the race, thanks Weldon. He also drops us off and picks us up from the
race, and that is really awesome!
Ok enough about life and on to
racing! Marathon morning was great
weather was looking good got to the race same time as always. Gun goes off at 8am and we are off. Mile one
Tom is right beside me and it was like, “hi.” He said your looking good and we
ran together for the next 9 miles and it was great to have Tom with me at the
beginning of the race. I told him at
mile 5 that I was kinda feeling funny at mile 2 and 3 but he said that normal
and I was feeling great from the rest of the time with Tom, he broke the wind
for me a couple of miles and was great company.
He dropped at mile 10 to go run with Chris Montogomery. And I had Weldon with me at this moment. He was on his road bike and we were cruising
down Riverside and he didn’t know if he was suppose to do that or not but no
one said anything to him. It was kinda
of frustrating because he was not pedaling and I could hear every once in
awhile that he would hit the breaks to slow down. The wind was pushing him a lot and it was
pushing me but I was still having to put out a lot of effort to run the pace I
was running. Weldon said at one point “is this rights it says we are going
9mph” I told him yes we are going pretty fast right now. I hit the half at 1:23:30, He continued with
me until we got to the end of Riverside and then he went to head back to get
his truck and camera to meet us at the finish.
This is really when the marathon
started for me, because up to this point it had been pretty easy but when I
turned up to go into down town Tulsa the uphill became hard and the wind. I looked at my watch going up one of these
hills and saw a pace of 7:15. My slowest mile at this point was into the wind
at mile 6 or 7 and it was a 6:42 with Tom breaking some wind. The slowest mile I had in 2011 was a 7:00 and
in 2011 I ran the second half 12 seconds slower than the first half. But this would not be true for 2012 because I
couldn’t put together any strong miles against the wind or the hills that the second
half had to offer. One of the great
things about this section was that I was still passing people and I hadn’t
gotten passed yet! So I was still
running pretty strong even though my pace had slowed. Then I hit a really slow mile against the
wind and a girl comes up beside me and I get behind her to let her take some of
the wind. Then I hear, “always running
with a girl,” and it was Tom standing on the side cheering me on. I hung in for a tough couple miles and then
got into Tulsa Campus. I was flying in
this area last year and it was hard to be running about 20 seconds slower per
mile in this area somewhere in this area or before this area was mile 20 and I
was really wanting to rally because I looked at my watch and did the math and
knew I could still PR. The wind in TU
just really discouraged me and I was just trying to hang in there. And that is what I did for the next 4 miles
and then I got to mile 24 and Tom pops out and runs with me again up a big hill
which was a huge help! And then I pressed
on to pass 2 more people at the finish with a time of 2:58. A couple minutes from a PR but I was super
happy with this run and any Boston Qualifier is a good day when I hadn’t ran
well all of 2012!
My legs were pretty good and my
toes were tore up pretty good! But it
was great! My favorite part about the
trip was driving back at Sallisaw on top of Backbone Mountain seeing the Sun
Pop Out and shining on Cavanal the World’s Highest Hill! I am ready to start running that dude and
getting to top more often!
I love where I live and love to run
where I live!
