OKC Memorial Marathon

Two weeks ago, Rich and I traveled to my home state to participate in the OKC Memorial Marathon. Actually I only ran the half marathon. It was kind of nice to run a race in OKC, since I have never done so in the past. This marathon is held in honor of the OKC bombing. Many of the volunteers were either victims or had family members that died in the bombing. I lived in OKC when the bombing took place, so the event brought back memories of that day for me. I lived about 5 miles from the Federal building and worked in Bricktown, no more than a quarter of a mile from the Federal building. I remember waking up that morning and turning on the news. The sun was shining in the bedroom window and then suddenly I heard a big rumble and all of the windows in the house shook. I thought maybe a severe thunderstorm was rolling in from the east and I just couldn't see it from my bedroom and the west side of the house. Those of you from middle America, have experienced those severe storms that pop up out of nowhere. One minute it's beautiful, the next there's a tornado in your area and it's raining cats and dogs. So I turned up the TV to see if a weather alert was going to come on. Instead a reporter broke into the program and started reporting that an earthquake had hit the area. This soon turned into reports of a bombing in downtown. I ended up getting ready for work and drove on in, even though I knew that there was trouble in the area. Once at work, the roads began to get closed off and the restaurant that I worked at went ahead and opened in order to give all of the workers that were being evacuated from downtown some place to go. It was truly a strange and unimaginable day. Definitely one that I will never forget. So the run was a bit personal to me. The race itself starts downtown by the memorial. It goes through Bricktown, past the capital and then winds along fan packed streets in NW OKC neighborhoods. Then the half marathoners cut back down Classen towards downtown, while the full marathoners, headed out to Hefner lake, Nichols Hills, and then back to Classen and then downtown. Honestly I actually liked the half marathon course. Unfortunately the weather did everyone in on race day. It was in the 70s with high humidity and 25 mph winds. Definitely too hot and too windy for a long race. OKC event planners were prepared for this and had plenty of water stops along the course.


OK, next post will be about the race results. Enjoy the amazing photos my Mom took of the memorial.