Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon - RunMarathon

Starting out my first race as an official pacer was pretty strange. I'm so used to running races fast and weaving in and out of the crowd to get past slower runners. This time we just had a nice staedy jog and it didn't feel like we were working at all. But we had our pace bands to keep us on track and we didn't need to do anything fast than 10:41/mile. First mile was 10:23.

We held back a little bit the second mile and came in at 10:40. Mile three was another quick one at 10:02. Now we were a full minute ahead of schedule which gave us a nice cushion to work with from here on out.

At the 5K marker we started asking the people around us what their names were, where they were from, if it was their first marathon, etc. Basically anything to distract them from what they were in the process of putting themselves through. Marie and I were cruising on auto-pilot but this was a challenging pace to people pacing off of us.

Mile 5 Marie told us her story of having surgery on a ligament in her ankle a few months ago. Turns out she had been in a wheelchair for three months was only able to walk 3 weeks ago. Last year she ran 30 marathons and finally finished all 50 states. She is on the Clif Bar pace team so she really knew what she was doing.

We hit the 10K mark and were 1:30 ahead of schedule. We wanted to hit the half-way mark within 2:00 of our goal time and the finish line within 1:00 of our goal time. So from here on out we took slightly longer to walk through each aid station.

The 10K mark also means that it's time for another round of jokes, but not new jokes. We told all the same ones and we could tell who had joined us along the way and who was still with us based on if they knew the punchlines or not.

Mile 7.5 is where the half runners dropped off and mile 9 brought a pretty good hill. The hills are where we lost the most people / picked-up the most people who couldn't hang with the faster pace groups. This is where we picked up Manny; a guy from Arlington who would make it throught he rest of the race with us.

Half-way mark and we were down to a minutes ahead of schedule. The next few miles wound around Lake Hefner and the wind really picked up so we took things a little slower. This is where Marie told me about the Marathon Maniacs and what it took to get in. I had seen people with the singlets before but I never realized what an elite group it was. Now I had to join! (Jump forward 3 days: I'm now Maniac #280.)

We took our time as we went through the park and when we checked out split at the next mile marker it was 11:47! Oops! We're exactly on pace now and we wanted to stay just a bit ahead of schedule. We had to pick things up just a step or two.

Marie needed some Vaseline so she stopped at the mile 18 aid station and the rest of us ran on ahead. She had no problems catching up to us a minute later.

After mile 20 we hit a long stretch of road on Classen Blvd that was all in the sun and the buildings blocked all of our wind. It wasn't miserable, but it was starting to get hot and we really needed something to keep us cool.

We tried to go through another round of jokes but everyone following us was just too tired to join in. It was understandable; we were running through the wall right now. Marie and I had no problems but everyone else was starting to show signs of bonking.

We had a couple of first-timers with us who we wanted to pace all the way to the finish, but we couldn't slow down just to help them. We had to stay on pace. Mile 23 brought us back into a neighbor hood and by now we had lost all our first-timers but one. At least we got them that far and they could walk and still break 5:00 from here.

By now it was down to Marie, Manny, Elaine and I and none of us were going to fall off pace so we started making plans on how to cross the finish line. We had been running together for several hours now so we all wanted to cross at the same time. As we got down to the last mile Manny and I had to keep telling Marie and Elaine to ease up a bit so they didn't get too far ahead.

Coming down the final street we could see the banner over the finish line and the clock had us right on schedule. We all lined up and held hands as we ran in less than a minute ahead of our goal pace. Not bad for my first time.

I was within a minute of my goal time. Can't ask for much more than that from a pacer.

Haley was waiting for us at the finish (she had my VIP wristband) and took a group photo for us. We all exchanged emails before we went on our seperate ways.

I got my finisher medal and grabbed a handfull of cookies, some yogurt and a couple of burgers from the post-race food tables. Sat down near the finisher shirt tent and ate for a bit. After a few minutes I went back to find some ice for my ankle. Oddly enough my right ankle hurt during my races yesterday but my left ankle was the one that hurt today. Strange.

I took off my shoe and filled my sock with ice before I walked back to finish eating with Haley. I told her all the stories from the and our routine of jokes (Two flies are sitting on a wall. One fly looks over at the other fly and says, "Your man is open.") before I grabbed my finisher shirt.

We sat under a tree in a small field before we walked back to the parking garage. I stretched out a bit before we got in and headed back to the Metroplex.


It was my job to run 4:40.


The OKC Memorial Marathon is a great race and the city really gets into it. I did the half last year and really liked the course but wasn't planning on doing it this year. IMAZ was just 3 weeks ago so I didn't know if I'd be able to do a marathon this soon, but I was asked to be a pacer and they paid my entry fee. Plus I got to cross another state off my list. How could I turn that down?!?