So it’s been about five weeks since we ran the Route 66 Half Marathon in Tulsa, and I am just getting around to writing about it. I figured I’d better get all my blogging in before I recap the year later this week.
Let me begin by saying how much I would love to run a race with good conditions. We thought it was going to be a beautiful day, temps in the mid 50s with no rain is what we were hearing all week, and that’s what I packed for. We headed up to Tulsa on Friday to spend time with the in-laws and met up with everyone at the race expo on Saturday afternoon.
I have probably said this before but I love race expos. I haven’t found one as good as the Rock N Roll in Dallas earlier this year, but I always have high hopes for freebies and all things running related that can be found at a good expo.
Kim, Rochelle, me, Josh, Jesica and Jeanne posing by the Route 66 sign. Since this was Josh’s first half marathon, we had to document it.
Me, Kim and Rochelle cheesing it up before we headed out.
After the expo we went to Dick’s Sporting Goods and dinner and headed home for a good night’s sleep.
I got all my gear laid out, and called it a night. I was quite surprised to wake up to temps in the 30s and while it wasn’t raining there was a lot of moisture in the air. I was very thankful for my long sleeve shirt I bought at the expo. Without it I might have froze to death.
Of course we had to take pictures before we left the house…
And then we had to ask a random stranger to take a picture of us freezing before the start of the race.
Once we got into the corral it wasn’t too bad. We were a part of what might be the world record for the most people doing the running man prior to the start, but I haven’t heard if we broke the record or not. What I didn’t remember, or decided to block out from last year’s race, was how many hills were at the start of the race. They changed up the course from last year but I recognized a lot of it at the start and it was about six straight miles of hills. That is a lot of hills.
Kim dropped back a little bit and Josh hung with Rochelle and I for most of the hills. Once it leveled out Rochelle dropped back a bit, but she wasn’t far behind me. The rest of the course was pretty flat and thankfully it didn’t ever rain, but the final three miles were straight into the wind, right by the river and they were pretty brutal.
I was hoping to finish in under 2 hours, and honestly I was pretty untrained for this race. I think Rochelle and I had ran 8 miles about four weeks earlier, but other than that I hadn’t ran more than six miles in the month leading up to the race. My chip time was 1:58:34 and I was very happy with that. Rochelle came in in under 2 hours as well. Josh finished in 2:06:01, and even though I was sure he was going to hate me forever for putting him through it, he is planning on running the half at the OKC Memorial this spring.
Of course there were pictures at the finish…
And more pictures when we went to our Tulsa office, which is conveniently located not far from the start, where we changed our clothes before we headed home.
I’m not sure if you can tell just how cold we were. I would kill for a race with good conditions.
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