Oklahoma City Memorial 5K

Sunday morning was the 13th Annual Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon.  Dan and I signed up for the 5K portion of the events.  I'm so glad I didn't know how big the event really was when I first suggested the run to Dan.  I may have skipped it this year because we are such newbies to running.  This was an exciting event and the number of people involved just elevated the experience.   The announcer at the run said that they had over 25,000 participating that morning.  Holy cow!

On Friday I went with our friend Lisa Sein to pick up our bibs and t-shirts.  Lisa was running the half-marathon and had heard that one of the vendors would be selling red socks.   All 3 of us wanted to do something to show support for Boston, and wearing socks sounded like a fun way to do it.  I don't know how many socks were ordered they were sold out by 2 o'clock when we got to the convention center.  Bummer.  As we were about to go get our t-shirts and leave, we noticed a lady with a shirt supporting Boston.  We headed over to the stand with those shirts and found one for each of us.  With our Boston shirts in tow, we picked up our marathon t-shirts and headed home.

Saturday night I found myself getting very excited about the run.  I have never participated in something so big.  OK.  Correction.  My Mom drove me and my cousin to Little Rock to be in Hands Across America.  I know that was way more people but they weren't all packed in a two block radius.  Dan and I got our gear out so we could just get up, get dressed and go.  Trust me this amount of prep was needed.  At the time we were getting up, thought processes would not be functioning well.

Sunday, 4:30 am.  Yep.  We were up before the crack of dawn.  UGH!  Once we were dressed, we picked up Lisa and headed to downtown OKC.  By this time all three of us were hyped.  The exit we took for downtown was packed with other runners.  People were all over the place as we looked for a parking spot. You would have thought it was late night with the amount of traffic downtown instead of 5 in the morning.  We parked and headed up to the race area.

Due to heightened security, helicopters with spotlights were flying over head.  Cops were everywhere.  It was surreal.  Lisa headed up to her corral and Dan and I looked for a way to get over to our corral.  It didn't happen.  We were on the wrong side of the marathon/half-marathon line up area.  We weren't trying to cross that madness.  Once we found an entrance to where we would actually start the race, we stood off to the side and did a little people watching.

At 6:30 the marathon and half-marathon started.  We were back by the 10 minute mile corral.  I could see the starting line but I couldn't see the end of the massive amount of people waiting to start the run.  It took 20 minutes to clear everyone participating in the half and full runs.  WOW!!  Once the end of the marathoners cleared our spot we entered the running area and walked down to where the 5K corral was located.  Shortly after 6:50 they counted down and our run started.

This was taken just after we entered the run area.  Look at the sea of people ahead of us.  

 I was determined to slow down and not burn out fast like I did in the 5K we ran last fall.  Dan wanted to keep a slower start to conserve energy so he ran with me for the first mile.   I had a rough training since January.  A round of the flu in March set me back much more than I thought it would and I had also just got over a respiratory virus that caused an asthma flare up.  I knew I would walk part of the run, but I wanted to run as much as I could.  My goal was to run at least 2 to 2.5 miles.

The run took us through downtown and into Bricktown.  I really liked the atmosphere of running by those tall buildings with people lining the streets.  It was fun to see all of the different types of people running.  Old and young.  Running and walking.  Decked out with cool running gear and tutus with funny shirts.  Grumpy cat even made an appearance.  Someone printed a poster of that cat that said 'I saw someone running once.  It looked awful!' Everyone that saw it cracked up.  We saw this in the first few blocks of the run so we still had our breath and a sense of humor.

The first hill of the race was a pickle.  It was a steep climb and I heard many around me exclaim "Oh no" when they saw it.  I was happy that I wasn't the only one who was surprised and alarmed by the hill.  Yea for those of us who were unprepared and didn't check out the course ahead of time.  Oh well.  Live and learn.  The rest of the run took us under 235 and up another hill by OU Medical Center.  The 5K group broke off on 10th and headed back to downtown.  The finish line was loud and exhilarating.  I found Dan at the finish line and we got in line to get our medals.

Both of us were very please with our runs. Dan's time was just over the last 5K we ran but this course was much harder.  His tracking app messed up during the first part of the run so we aren't exactly sure of what his time was.  We did a little guess work to come up with the time we think he had.  I had a personal best 1st mile and a personal best overall minute per mile.  Overall we were very happy with our results for our second run.  I wish I could explain how amazing the whole experience was. I know I'd like to do it again next year and maybe try the relay later on.  Baby steps.  We have the mud run coming up in June.  Let's see how that goes first!  :-)

Finished!  

Beautiful Medals