Man, I can’t believe we didn’t win! After all, we trained like the devil and we let that guy beat us!
In all seriousness, we finished about like I predicted the other day. Our official time was 5:21, and I can’t say enough good things about my dear, sweet, tough as nails wife. She is a trooper, and did an awesome job in some conditions that were a lot tougher than we expected. Overall, for a couple of fifty year old first time racers, we’re happy with the results.
The temperature when we got up on Sunday morning in Tulsa was 66 degrees, with a high forecasted to be 73. Not the best conditions to be running. You’ll notice the clouds in the picture above…it was warm and humid all day.
The first fifteen miles of the race wound through what we perceived to be “Old Town” Tulsa, with it’s stately houses and pretty neighborhoods, then back through downtown. It was interesting to run through, but much more hilly than we had trained for. By the time we were approaching what we knew would be the flat finish on Riverside Drive at the sixteen mile mark, I could tell the hills were taking their toll on us, and especially Pam.
We were looking forward to the final ten miles on what we assumed would be a relatively easy finish, so you can imagine our dismay when we dropped off the final hill and around the corner into a brutal headwind. We knew it was windy earlier, but the hills had been somewhat protecting us from the worst of it. Down along the Arkansas River, there was no protection at all, and we were running straight into a wind that we later found was at 20-30 mph. Talk about demoralizing! It felt like we were carrying about 20 pounds of extra weight for the entire 6 miles we had to fight that wind!
At 22 miles, we were relieved to make the turnaround and finish out with that wind at our back, but by that time, we were spent. Imagine my frustration when I noticed that the empty cups from the water stops were blowing down the street faster than we could run!
There was a nice crowd to welcome us to the finish line, and we enjoyed the fact that the announcer “talked us home” to the finish line. We crossed together, with our hands clasped together and raised in victory!
We did it! Check out our medals!
God bless…
TW
