Four months ago I would have told you, I don't run; never have, never will. But I was given a challenge and took it. My oldest sister is a runner. A very good one. She found out about the Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon and saw that there is a marathon relay. She gave us the challenge to run the relay. She told us about it in October of 2010 and we registered to run in November. At that time I immediately grabbed the shortest leg of the race, 3.1 miles, knowing good and well I was the least athletic of all my sisters. Of course, I procrastinated the workouts until early January. I started out as slow as possible running only for a minute or two at at a time. Surprisingly, those minutes extended rather quickly and I was able to run 3 miles within a short two months. I signed up to run a 5K in mid March to get a feel of what a race was like. I shocked myself to pieces when I ran that 5K in 32.32 and came in fourth place in my age division beating out my most athletic sister! I continued to run and got up to 4 miles in April!
Oklahoma City Marathon is here! Julie and I drove up to meet my dad, sisters and Whitney on Saturday, April 30. We picked up our packets, had a nice dinner and went to the hotel. First and foremost the hotel was NOT what we expected. We picked it off Expedia.com and was a dump. It wasn't dirty really, it was just old and not kept up to date. The noise barriers were non existent. We decided since we needed to be downtown with 25,000 other people by 5:45 the next morning a cab ride was our best bet.
The weather forecast for OKC on race day was not exciting. 50 degrees was the high, windy and 10% chance of rain. We prepared ourselves with sweatpants to keep us warm prior to our legs of the race. We all had matching t-shirts made for the race and the cutest red and white striped knee high socks!! We were the cutest team in the race!
The cabbie picked us up at 5:30 am and drove us to the First Methodist Church, where a free pancake breakfast was being held. We were standing outside the church, getting our bibs on when it started lightning and sprinkling. We decided to go inside the church for a minute and lucky thing, it starts pouring rain. And it did not stop. The marathon was postponed 30 minutes due to the lightning. We sat inside, drank a cup of coffee and waited. When it was getting closer to race time we got ready. Jodi went to the starting line and the rest of us went to try to watch the race begin. We counted down to the start then took off to find our bus.
Each leg of the relay was to catch a bus to the exchange point. It was still raining at this point, but not as badly. But it was still very cold. I found and got on my bus and waited in the nice warmth of it before heading off to our exchange. By the time we reached the relay exchange point it was 7:50. I knew Jodi's goal to finish her leg
of the race was an hour; so hopefully she is about finished and Julie is next. My exchange point was at the edge of a lake in a park. There was little to no shelter. The marathon committee had set up two canopy's with tables of food and water and our only shelter was to squeeze all 900 of us underneath them. My guess is only about 150 at a time fit. Lucky for me, I found a spot, but it was still freezing cold and I was in no way dry. I kept checking the time and realized around 9:15 I was going to have to brave the cold and rain and get out from underneath my shelter and look for Jennifer who was the third leg of the race. God smiled down on me and stopped the rain about that time. I kept looking for Jenn and praying for her to hurry. I looked up and just out of the corner of my eye saw her run right past me! I had to c
hase after her yelling her name, knowing she couldn't hear me because she had her headphones on! I hadn't yet taken my sweats off or got my iPod ready, but didn't have any time. She finally saw me and we made our exchange and I took off. It did NOT rain the entire time I ran! It was awesome. The people lining the streets cheering for us were amazing. I didn't feel tired at all. I did however have some cramping in my right quad muscle, but I pushed through. I also felt very slow. Lots of people passed me and right about the time I was finished running I realized these people are marathoners, they run a lot faster than me, who cares!
Earlier in the day I was complaining about having to drive home later that night all by myself. My dad looked at me and said I wasn't going to have to, that my best friend was coming to surprise me at the finish line. I almost started crying right then and there. And there she was, Jammi was standing at my finish line when
I crossed it! She said she was so proud of me and she just had to see me finish. I honestly wouldn't have been able to do this without her. She had watched Beau for me every Tuesday and Thursday for the past four months so I could run. She has been an angel.
So I hand my chip off to Whitney and head to the bus to get back to the finish line to watch her. By the time the bus took off it had started pouring again. When we reached downtown I just took off running again. I had spoken to Julie on the phone and she said they didn't want to wait for me any longer and just to head to the bleachers. I was trying to call her when I looked up and there they were right in front of me. Jenn was no where to be found! She didn't have her phone on her so we just had to watch Whit without her. As so
on as Whitney crossed the finish line; it was now 42 degrees, raining, winds 15-20 mph; we ran after her. Lo and behold, Jenn's right there! We grab Whitney and head to the church, our saving grace. There we get dry and warm and meet up with Aunt Susie and Dennis.
As we sit there we look up of chip times. My leg of the race ended up being about 3.5 miles. My goal was 35 minutes, my time was 34.59!! Our total time was 4:09. We unofficially placed 10th out of 72 teams in our division and 87th out of 900 overall! We are so proud of ourselves. Dennis and Susie have the Expedition so they drive us to the hotel so we can change clothes and go eat lunch.
This experience was a very challenging and emotional experience for me. Although my mom was not a victim of OKC, we still did this run for her. She would have been so proud of us and no doubt our number one fan. I love her and miss her terribly.
I'm not gonna stop running. My next goal is a 10K. Ev
entually I'm going to run a half marathon. I know I can do it and want to do it. Thank you, Jennifer for pushing me into this race and now this lifestyle. Love you!
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