Ouch

This hurts much worse than last year's marathon. I don't know if it was because my training in the last couple of weeks was curtailed due to my knee injury, or something else, but this one was a lot more painful. The day was beautiful, although it started off a little cold, but it was manageable. I found a trailer where a generator was running before the race and stood beside it for about 15 minutes before the race began, talking with a guy who's trying to do a marathon in every state. This was his eleventh.

The early part of the run was okay. But about mile three I could feel a few things weren't completely right and knew it was going to be a long day. And it was. Fortunately, the course here in Tulsa was nice and flat, and even the hills toward the end were pretty easy. Since this was Alan's first race I stayed with him. Until he left me.

About mile 19 he was starting to walk every so often, which was killing me because any time we walked I started to tighten up. When we'd get to the water stops I'd drink and keep walking and then wait for him to catch up at which point I'd start running again. It seemed to work pretty well. After mile 22 we did our routine and I walked, and walked, and walked. I turned around and he wasn't anywhere in sight. I waited a minute, still didn't see him, and then walked back toward the water stop. I didn't see him anywhere and figured maybe he got ahead of me somehow. I ran through Woodward Park, where there were some hills, which I figured would slow him up, but still didn't see him. In one of the nice neighborhoods past mile 23 I thought maybe I had left him behind and missed him, so I stood by the side of the road and waited for 15 minutes. No sign of him, so I guessed maybe he'd caught the trolley to the finishing area.

As I finished Michael was standing by the chute and told me his dad had already finished! His story, if you can believe it, was that when he was at the water station a pace group passed us and he didn't think that was very cool, so he took off. I never saw him, and he thought I must be ahead of him. The bad news is that he now gets to hold it over my head that in his first marathon he beat me. Game on, Poole.

Again, not my best running day, but I finished and got a big ol' medal. So did Alan, and even though we now hurt like a couple of old men, it was successful.