Intro: After Chicago I had planned on my next scheduled marathon to be the WDW Marathon (actually The Goofy Challenge) in January. I had told a friend that I would run Tulsa with him as a training run for WDW. This was to be his second marathon, he has been battling back from PF issues since early spring and was ready to go. His planned pace (4:45 goal time) would be perfect for a training run for me and I could keep him company through the race. Two of my training partners for Chicago also decided to run this as their fall marathon since Chicago turned into such a bust.

Preliminaries: Since Tulsa is just a couple of hours from my house, I drove up on Friday (state holiday for the centenial) to pick up the race packet. I quickly browsed the expo, had a nice lunch, and drove home. Saturday night, I attached my bib to shirt and chip to shoe.

FR: black Adidas shorts, gray 2007 Chicago Marathon souveneir NB tech shirt, Chicago Marathon souveneir hat, Thorlos socks, NB 826 running shoes, and Garmin 305.

Race day: I awoke at 5:00am prior to the alarm sounding. Dressed and ate my muffin and banana. And was on the road by 5:20am. Arrived in Tulsa and was parked at the race start at 7:10am. Checked out the starting area, visited with a few friends and found my friend that I was running with. Never saw PatriotsSR1. I'm guessing ~2000 in the marathon start.

Race day weather: ~50 at start with fog rolling in. ~68 at the end.

The race: After the National Anthem, the race started. Miles 1-4 were a loop out and across the Arkansas River and back. First bridge over was slightly elevated, second bridge was flat. For the next 10 miles, we followed the river south to the small town (now suburb) of Jenks, passed the Oklahoma Aquarium, ran Jenk's Main Street, then back up the river north to mile 21 or so, where we cut off into some hilly Tulsa neighborhoods. Lots of ups and downs for the next 4 miles, then downhill for the last mile to the finish. We maintained a nice even pace for the first 16 miles of about 10:30/mile. My friends foot started hurting a bit about there, so we slowed up to 10:45/mile. When we got to the hills we really slowed up. Walking up and running down them. These hills were much worse than I imagined, so our pace really slowed. Final time: 4:48:58. About 5 minutes off of goal, but still pleased with the result.

Conclusion: Tulsa did a great job with this small marathon. The course was well stocked. Plenty of volunteers. Not many spectators, but with such a small field thats to be expected.

I really had a good time running with my friend. He had been my youngest DD's softball coach from ages 5 - 15. So we caught up on all the girls and how they were doing in their first year of college.

Opie, I resisted the temptation to go all-out even though racing conditions were perfect. I just kept telling myself; 'It's just a training run,. It's just a training run."

PatriotSR1, I checked your finish time. Congrats on a sub-3:30. You were the fastest Paul in the race and I was the slowest Paul in the race.

Thanks for reading,

Paul

Edited to fix a few typos.

http://This message has been edited by pfriese (edited Nov-19-2007).

Edited again to add:

The race shirt was a nice short-sleeved tech shirt with a Route 66 logo on front. The finishers shirt was a long-sleeved tech shirt with the race logo on front. Two tech shirts were great and that long-sleeved one will be handy this winter. The race medal was also nice, once again with the route 66 theme. The race was run on parts of the old route 66, hence the tie-in of course.


http://This message has been edited by pfriese (edited Nov-19-2007).