Woke up and waited for Ean and Maryln to come over so we could run in the inaugural Tinker 1/2 marathon. We got out there about a hour before gun time and met J-Hat. We sat around for a bit in my car and waited till about 30 till and jogged down for about a mile on the course then made it back to the car in time to strip off warmup clothes and hit the can one last time....
The goal for today was to at least get the single age 1/2 marathon record which was (1:15:10) held by Adam Cohen. The time may sound easy to some but let me tell you this is a hard time to run in Oklahoma with the races and times of the year they are ran. I saw this half pop up on the schedule and was quick to decided on running it with the cool air I was pretty sure I could get it.
We took off and I jump right out front and stayed there the entire race. I knew by 2-3 miles I was going to be running a longer course with the tangents that were hard to hit at times. I saw Ian ahead of J-Hat a good bit around mile 4 where we had a switch back and you could kinda see how far back folks were. Well when I was coming out of the switch back I saw what looked like and was a lady that was ahead of both of my buds and was about 1/4 to 1/2 mile behind me in second. I continued on to mile 5 going up a longer tapered hill and had some stomach pains I was kinda worried it was more than gas and was almost afraid to trust it..I ended up trusting in to no ill effects. When I got to the top of the hill they had a water stop and I grabbed a gatorade that had an awful taste. I ran on down to the turn around and by this point i was getting kinda warm. I turned around and was greeted by a nice cool north wind. I was surprised to see the woman behind me and still ahead of Ian and J-Hat. They all still looked pretty fresh when I went by them.
I got down to mile 8 and threw my gloves off at the fellas I work with that were following me around. I felt pretty good but notice that I had slowed some when I ran into the wind. I was certain that if I could just continue on and not completely tank I could get that record.
Mile 12 was pretty slow and into the wind which was picking up somewhat. I also knew I had to save a little to get up watermelon hill. I got over to watermelon hill and it seemed as if the wind just blew me right up to the top and I picked up the last .5 mile or so into the finish line and could hear my Mom cheering me from a long ways off. It was really fun to see her get excited for me.
I got in at 1:14:32 and was about 10 min ahead of everyone else. I snapped a few photos with the high brass and gave my mom a big hug. Picked up some goodies and headed over to the car to put my warm-up clothes back on. The temps seemed to be falling throughout the race and the wind was picking up. I saw the lady finally making her way in and then saw J-Hat and he was really making some ground on her.
J-Hat was not able to catch her but he had a huge PR at 1:25 and change. Ean fell off about mile 11 according to J-Hat. Turns out the Lady that took 2nd place was a Olympic qualifier for Hong Kong in the marathon and ran for BYU as well. Maggie Chan- Roper who moved here with her husband who serves in the military.
We were really surprised when we got some money at the awards..I picked up 250 J-hat and Maryln pick up a 100 bucks.
They had lots of goodies afterwards. I had a great time with my friends and look forward to running this one again.
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