Oklahoma City Marathon

At the completion of the Garmin ("Land of Oz") Marathon we headed over the massage tent to have a massage before starting the 5 hour drive to Oklahoma City.  The drive was pretty boring from Kansas to Oklahoma City.  We arrive in Oklahoma City around 6:15 and headed directly over to the Sheraton for late packet pick-up which only our race number.  I had contacted the race committee a couple of weeks out and was informed that they would have our race number and shirt; at the late pick-up they only had race bibs; and didn’t seem to be happy to about working the late pick-up.  We asked what the procedure was for obtaining the cotton race shirt and the race committee was rude and basically told us to send an email and hope for the best.  

We had dinner at Applebee's and this place did not sold Diet Sierra Mist.

Flat Runners Cara and Floyd

We departed the Residence Inn around 5:00 and on the way over there was some lighting in the area.  While trying to park this one jerk decided that he would not let us merge over because he had to let his passenger out before proceeding to the parking garage.  Upon walking up to the starting area it looked like the race would start on time so we made our way over to the porta-a-john and went into the corral where we wanted to start the race.  Well after standing there for about 15 minutes they announced over the loud speakers to take cover because a line of very strong thunderstorms were headed our way.  This delay became a two hour delay.

Finally in the corrals waiting 

And we're moving 

Gorilla hill 

Cara is so over the marathon

So where between miles 19 and 20 I had my first mental breakdown in a marathon.  I really don't know what went wrong during these miles.  I eventually convince Cara and Tracy to go ahead and finish their race and I would see them at the finish line.  I ended up finishing about 20 minutes later. 

Cara bless her was waiting for me at the finish line after collecting our finisher shirt we proceeded to locate the car.  It took us about 40 minutes to finally find where we parked the car, after realizing that we were on the correct street earlier we just didn't go down far enough.  

Marathon number 29 and State number 23 completed.