The Louisiana Marathon:

“jambalaya crawfish pie file gumbo”

The sub-title of this article is most appropriate, because, aside from running the Louisiana Marathon in Baton Rouge, the main theme of this week vacation for Carolyn and myself was eating.  Being in Louisiana, the foods mentioned above were all things we had to try, in addition of others.

Our vacation was divided into two parts.  We flew from BWI on Thursday to New Orleans Airport, rented a car and drove to Baton Rouge to spend four days, including the Sunday marathon day.  Our motel was about ten miles outside the center of town.  Baton Rouge, which is the state capitol of Louisiana and is home to LSU, is a nice enough place, if not exactly jumping with things to see.  We managed to find enough in the three days before the race to keep us occupied.  We got out to two natural areas.  The first was a parish (county) park.  It was a bit unsettling being there because there was an active firing range for police and walking around we saw animal figures that were targets.  The other area was a preserved swamp area, which was nice to see.  We met the photographer who spent most of his spare time hanging out there getting shots of wildlife.  We also met another couple, who were going to run the marathon.  They were delighted with the weather in the 50s, having traveled with sub-zero weather in Wisconsin.

We spent time downtown, walked the Mississippi River level, strolled through a riverboat casino, which seemed to have mostly older black people for clientele, and found the starting and finishing areas near the state capital.  We also scouted out a highway into town, which had numerous fast food places and picked one at which to stop the morning of the race for a 5:00 A.M. breakfast and use of the bathroom facilities so we could avoid the portajohn lines.  On Friday we went to the expo as soon as it opened and got my number and shirt.  The expo had nothing to offer to me as an out-of-towner.

On the morning of the race, we were up at 4:00.  After breakfast, we headed into town and found a spot on the street about three blocks from the finish (and two more from the start).  On a nearby corner were several portajohns and, sure enough, I had to use one despite already having been in the restroom of Mickey D’s.  Around 6:20 we made our way toward the start.  At 6:45 I stripped off my warm-ups, which Carolyn would carry around for hours until I got done.  Because the temperature was in the 40s (rising to about 60 when I finished), I wore shorts and a long-sleeved tech shirt with light gloves – much less than I had been wearing at home in the cold. Then I entered the corrals and placed myself near the four-hour pacer.  I did not intend to run the marathon in four hours, but hoped to hold the pacing group for half of the race and possibly finish under the 4:04 I ran at Erie in September.

Having received a GPS for Christmas, this was the first marathon in which I would wear it.  I also had my usual watch to record the official “mile” splits.  This made the start a bit  complicated as I wanted to start both instruments as I crossed the start line.  I hit the stopwatch and then the GPS.  Of course, several dozen more people had piled in near the 4:00 pacer and I found myself separated by 20 or more yards as I started.  I had to work for over a mile to make contact with the group.

I quickly discovered the following things:  1. The pacer was going a little too fast as he was clicking off  about 9:05 on the official miles (instead of 9:10s).  2. My GPS was showing that each mile was consistently one or two hundreds of a mile long. 

The course went down near the river, then across town and over a bridge (the only hill, but we would cross it again in the 25^th mile), down a residential street with many live oaks, whose roots pushed under the asphalt, raising bumps to trip over.  Then we went through the LSU campus, past the back of Tiger Stadium, and continued running for five more miles around a lake.  In mile ten I got into a brief conversation with another guy who had been trying to keep up with the pacer.  He said the guy was “crazy”.  Our next mile was 8:56, which confirmed his diagnosis.  I slowed up to recover in the next mile, but kept seeing this runner ahead in the distance, which made for a convenient carrot to chase.  I eventually passed him in the latter stages when he walked through a water stop and he finished eight minutes behind me.

I passed the half marathon rug in 2:00:23, not far off my early goal.  But the pacer was long gone.  The fourteenth mile was the worst measured one on the course.  It took me 51 seconds longer to cover it than mile 13 and the next several miles were also faster than 14.  It’s almost like they measured a mile from the half marathon mat.  After about mile 18, I began to slow a bit more with each passing mile.  No 4:04 was in the cards for me.  I plugged on.  The area with the live oak roots, now at 22, 23, 24 on the return, was a bit scary as I frequently scuffed the bulging asphalt because my tired legs were not lifting very much.  I was glad to get out of there intact.  The bridge wasn’t that bad as I used my race-walking technique to get up it.  From there it was about another mile to the finish.  Done in 4:10:06.

Carolyn was right there and we walked to the festival area.  Each runner had a strip of numbers running down the side of the race bib.  I pulled it off and we proceeded to get some food and drink.  The ten numbers allowed us to get ten items of either and it did not matter who was using it, so Carolyn had plenty as well.  In fact, one of the guys at the beer truck was only checking one number for two beers the first time and did not check any at all the next time.  I guess there was enough extra to give out.

A band was playing and it did a long set.  I guess the style was jazz fusion.  I would have preferred Dixieland jazz, zydeco, blues or rock and roll. Eventually the directors got around to the awards.  I had won second in my age group.  In fact the printout of my results showed I was second in the group all the way through the race, quite a bit behind the guy in first, but far ahead of the third-place runner.  The award on a piece of slate roof, recovered in New Orleans after Katrina.  Obviously each award was on its own unique piece of slate.

After the awards we made our way back to our car and went back to our motel for some much needed salt and sweat removal. Later we went out to a popular brew pub in the Louisiana Mall, a huge shopping area.

The next morning we began the second half of our vacation.  We took the rental car back to the New Orleans airport and took an airport shuttle into New Orleans.  Although the trip out and back cost us $38 apiece, the price of four more days of rental and four days of parking in New Orleans was more expensive.  Plus, anytime one moved a car in New Orleans, the question of where to park would come up.  From our hotel, the French quarter as an easy walk.  The bus and trolley cost seniors 40 cents and we used them for our trips out to the parks.

To summarize our time in New Orleans, we walked through the French quarter on several different streets, ate in a different establishment for each lunch and dinner, saw the big muddy bend in the Mississippi.  My favorite times were getting on public transportation and going to Audubon Park one day and City Park another. We did this to get in a lot of walking.  The first day, Monday, after the marathon, my legs were pretty tired walking around the French Quarter.  But they gradually felt better as the week went on.

Audubon Park is west of downtown, a starting a couple blocks below Tulane University.  The trolley ride out went through a nice area where the city gentry reside.  After walking around for an hour, we approached the entrance to the Zoo.  Admission for a Senior was $27.50 and we were not about to pay that much.  But a young woman with two young children saw us walking away and came over and said she could get us in on her yearly pass. She agreed the charges were too high for people who were only going to be there once.  So we spent about three hours in the zoo.  A lot of work was going on to expand it, so maybe after it is done, it would be worth spending a full day at the price.

On our last day in New Orleans, we went out to City Park.  Before we had gone, I had already checked out the course of the New Orleans Marathon, which is two weeks after Baton Rouge.  It starts on a street which is only a block from where we were staying, goes out to Audubon Park, back into town past the French Quarter and then turns north to City Park.  The half-marathon finishes there at the beginning of the park.  City Park is so big (I guess at least four miles long and over a mile wide), that the second half of the marathon merely has to go along the edge of the park on the west and north side and maybe a mile more before turning around to finish in the same area as the half does.

Walking into the park, I read the plaque, which stated that the park was built in 1938 by Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration.  This project employed 20,000 people. We only saw the tip of the park, but in it were three great attractions:  A garden and arboretum, the New Orleans Museum of Art, and a sculpture garden.

New Orleans seems to be bouncing back after Katrina.  There is a lot of building going on, not only private high-rises, but a huge Veterans Affairs Project that we passed on Canal Street.

On Friday, we were up by 3:30 A.M. in order to catch our shuttle by 4:15.  We arrived at the airport quickly and went through security pre-screened.  So we had to wait for 5:00 A.M. in order to get some breakfast.  Our plane was on time, but it had to wait to be de-iced before take-off as we would be ascending through clouds laden with possible frozen precipitation.  We were really lucky as a later flight may have been delayed by freezing rain.  We also lucked out missing the big snowstorm at home and the delays involved with that.  Three days later, we landed on time and made our way home.  Our son and daughter-in-law had come over and shoveled our driveway, so we didn’t have to immediately tackle something like that and we could concentrate on unpacking and unwinding.

Recommendation:  The Louisiana Marathon has much to recommend it- a high probability of good weather, a flat and fairly scenic course, and killer after-party.  Baton Rouge doesn’t have much going on, so it’s better to limit time there and plan to spend some time in New Orleans, which has something to appeal to everyone.  We were not much for spending time on Bourbon Street, which had someone at most every bar trying to pull you in.  There are numerous beggars, probably more prostitutes than the one or two we saw, and musical street acts, all looking for some money.  Like Las Vegas, New Orleans is another city where walking down the street drinking is not a problem.  We found that after Monday (MLK holiday), most of the people being tourists were older couples.  Of course, partiers would prefer to come during Mardi Gras.  I would guess that hotel prices are higher then.

This article is quite long, not because of writing about the marathon, but to add the Las Vegas anecdotes.

The Hoover Dam Marathon

After running the Route 66 Marathon in Tulsa, I wanted to get in one more marathon before the end of the year and to check another state off of my list of those in which I have done one.  I thought I was going to register for the Rocket City Marathon in Huntsville, AL., which would allow a fairly cheap flight into Nashville and a drive to get to it.  But it was already full.  Ricky Singh was already registered for the Hoover Dam Marathon and wanted me to go with him.  So that is what I choose.  Although I initially did not want to fly that far, I’m glad I did.  Flights to Las Vegas, motel stays, and food are all relatively cheap because the idea is to get people there to gamble.

On Friday morning Ricky and his dad picked me up and we were dropped off at the Philadelphia Airport.  The flight was uneventful, but I did enjoy the latter part when the snow-covered Rockies came into view.  Eventually the view changed to peaks clear of snow in a desert setting.

Upon disembarking the plane, one is immediately hit with the Las Vegas “ambience” - slot machines in the concourse and huge video screens in the lobbies, touting various shows and attractions.  We made our way to the shuttle for car rentals. Arriving there, Ricky had to endure the typical lecturing from a stern female car rental employee about the usual issues, designed to get him to spend more money on insurance or a larger vehicle.  In the latter case, her claim was that I was too tall to fit into a Toyota Yaris.  It was fine.

We checked into a Howard Johnson motel about a half-mile from the strip.  After settling in a bit, we headed out for an early meal.  It was 4 p.m., but our stomachs were on East Coast time.  I began to get my education in “Vegas culture” as we walked to an Indian restaurant.  I wasn’t used to seeing people walking down the street with beer cans in their hands.  I learned that stands on the street don’t sell newspapers, but instead are selling cheesecake brochures for escort services. 

As we walked, I saw a big van with a picture of Gene Simmons from Kiss on it.  I was thinking that Kiss must be playing in Vegas and this was a tour vehicle. But as we rounded the vehicle, I saw that it went with the building where it was parked:  The Gene Simmons Wedding Chapel!  That certainly fits Vegas!

After our meal, we sauntered up to the strip.  On the way, we were passed by several young black people in a good mood and laughing as they approached.  Then one guy said, “Hey, there’s OG!” as he looked at me.  “How’s it going OG?” he said in passing.  Looking at Ricky, I asked what he meant.  He said, “Old Geezer”, which is pretty funny.  But the Urban Dictionary says the basic meaning is Original Gangster, referring to older people in a gang, or, more generally, a term of respect for an elder.  I’ll accept that!

We hit the strip, which was mobbed with people.  I haven’t mentioned that the cowboy convention was in town and numerous people were walking around wearing ten-gallon hats.  We only walked a couple blocks, heading back toward the motel.  But on every block, several people, usually Hispanic women, would try to get the men to take a card out of their hand for various strip clubs.  They get paid by the cards that are turned in. So they keep at it, slapping the cards against a hand and then thrusting them out.  We watched a spray can artist, making pictures of moons and stars.  I eventually bought couple of large beers to be consumed the next day after the marathon.

Back at the motel, I made my preparations for the race, which included the emptying of 13 gels into a bottle, mixing it with warm water and shaking it until the gel was thoroughly mixed into the water.  Taking planes forces me to do that instead of mixing brown rice syrup in advance because I can’t take a bottle of fluids through airport security.  After checking email, I settled in bed before 8 p.m.  Having been up since 5:30 on the East Coast, my body knew it was almost 11 p.m.

The Race

I woke at 4 a.m.  Ricky wanted to sleep longer.  So I walked to Coco’s restaurant next door for breakfast.  I watched three guys come in dressed in the hip-hop style of having their pants hang below their bottoms.  I pondered how the pants stayed up and figured only an unusually wide stance would keep them from completely dropping “trou”.  It’s like hobbling oneself in the same way that much fashionable female clothing does.

After I returned to the room, Ricky rose and soon went off for his breakfast, allowing me to finish my preparations.  Upon his return, we were soon off for the roughly forty-minute ride out to Lake Mead. After we entered Boulder City, we took a left and after cresting a hill, we saw Lake Mead.  At that point we were about 1,000 feet above it and drove for four miles with it seeming we would never get to the lake before we made the turn for the park entrance.  We paid the park fee, followed directions for parking and walked to the number pick-up area.  We had gotten there over an hour early, so we beat the busloads of runners coming out from Vegas.

Before returning to the car to keep warm (it was only about 40 degrees, but sunny, just after dawn), I saw an older guy (76) with a 50 States Marathons shirt and a sign on it saying that this race would be his 200^th marathon.  His name was Charles Sayles and he was formerly the vice-president of the 50 States Club.  He had a camera and a sign-up sheet and he took each of our pictures and asked us to fill out our latest information for the club.

Approaching 8:00 A.M. we all lined up.  First the 10K runners started.  They had to do a little loop in the parking lot in order to get in 10K by the time they got to their finish near the Hoover Dam. The marathoners and half-marathoners then started at 8:02. Marathoners would do two of the same loop.  Right from the start, as we ran up the steep entrance to the picnic area where we had gathered, I knew it was going to be a tough day.

Each loop of the course went like this:  Almost three miles of asphalt trail, all mildly uphill, made it difficult to get into a comfortable breathing rhythm. The trail turned to rough gravel and climbed another couple miles.  Sometimes rocks stuck out that one could trip over.  The gravel trail leveled out near the top, but we had to go through a series of six tunnels through the hills.  In some of them the surface eventually was too dark to see, making me iffy about every step I took.  Lots of runners also stirred up dust in the tunnels. Then we had a screaming descent in the last mile before the turn-around.  Eventually we went down a switchback ramp to the roof to the Hoover Dam parking garage, ran over to the other side (where one could see the Hoover Dam if one was paying attention, but I wasn’t), and looped back to the ramp.  The ascent of the ramp was just the start to this killer mile of uphill.  We retraced our course, but had to run past the turn to the finish to add the 13^th mile.

In terms of elevation, the course gained about 400 feet in the first 3.5 miles, 50 feet in the next 1.6, and then dropped 200 feet over a mile.  Then it all reversed.  The 13^th mile was rolling.  Over half the course was gravel, which slowed me down. It was also windy on the hills and through the tunnels.

On the other hand the view was beautiful.  Every view out there was crystal clear.  At times we were over 500 feel above Lake Meade, looking down on a boat marina.

The first time up the hills I had already picked up bits of gravel in my shoes.  But I wasn’t going to stop as long as the gravel shifted away from a sensitive spot, which seemed to happen.  I was close to Ricky for about seven miles, but after that first time up the really steep hill, I lost my will to try to hang with him.  About then another guy, a 50 stater, came along and started a conversation, but he did 80% of the talking.  This slowed me up a bit, which was fine by me.  I knew I had to run the loop twice and going too hard on the downhills near the end of the first loop would have beaten me up.  The guy, Eddie Hahn, said he was there mainly to support Charles Sayles.  He said Charles had problems getting under seven hours in an earlier, easier marathon and he didn’t know if Charles could beat that cut-off time on this course.

A little before the ten-mile point, we were approaching a port-a-john beside the trail.  Since everything around it was rocks and gravel, the door opened into the asphalt trail.  A guy came out just as a short woman was running toward it and she plowed right into the door.  I could tell she was in pain, as she was holding her ribs and took a while to get her running rhythm back.  I resolved to tell someone in the race organization about the incident later.  When I did, the guy thanked me and said that in the future they would put cones out to keep runners from going right past the door.

Eddie took off at about 12.5 miles and I was on my own again.  Down I went to the start/finish area for the beginning of my second loop.  More hills, more gravel in my shoes, more dust, and more beauty.  Finally, as we began the descent at 18 miles to the parking garage, I abandoned the race-walk strategy I had been using on the steeper downhills and let my stride lengthen.  I was passing people who were hurting because they had already beaten up their quads.

Right at the far side of the parking garage roof was the 19-mile mark.  The next mile, the steepest on the course, took me 13:33 to complete. Although I had race-walked much of this mile the first time through, the second time I didn’t have as much strength and had to resort to good old-fashioned trudging up the steepest sections.

Going down the gravel trail and through the tunnels for the last time was miserable.  For some reason the gravel in my shoes had shifted a few pieces right under my arches, making the steps painful.  Finally, with 3.5 miles to go, I left the gravel path and the gravel in my shoes shifted away from irritating me.  Then I could finally let it go.  Usually when I’m racing from the beginning, I’m hurting at the end and my last miles are my slowest.  But because I was conservative in the first half of the race and the nature of the course didn’t let me run fast, except on mile nineteen, I was still relatively fresh.  Mainly my quads didn’t hurt.  Miles 24 and 25 were both done in 9:25 each, my fastest of the day.  Mile 26 was a bit more difficult. 

I finished in 4:43:01.  I felt like I did the best I could on the day.  I was only about five minutes slower in the second half than the first. Later I found a comparison with another runner, Robert Toonkal, who had also run Delaware last May.  I ran Delaware in @4:08, 35 minutes faster than Hoover Dam.  Toonkal ran Delaware in 3:58 and Hoover Dam in 4:33, which is also 35 minutes more.  Ricky finished in 4:36, which he considered a success since he had done little running in the past three weeks.

After we finished, we grabbed some food.  I eventually made my way to the car to grab one of the beers.  Eventually, Eddie Hahn was seated with us and I shared the beer with him.  He’s an interesting guy, who has done his years in the army and is raising three kids on his own after his wife left him.  We decided to friend each other on Facebook.  I told him my politics might not agree with his.  He said he didn’t care about politics; he just likes runners.

The Sideshow

So we made our way back to Vegas and got showered and cleaned up.  Again we walked out to go to dinner.  We decided to eat at the Hard Rock Café, which we had passed the evening before.  We went almost a mile out of our way finding it.  The food hit the spot, but I must say that musical selections being played were not all “Hard Rock” with pop and country and western mixed in.  I guess they know their clientele.

After eating we made our way back to the Strip.  We entered the “Miracle Mile”, which is a long, indoor shopping center and walked through it.  At the other end was a casino and Ricky said we should go in and check it out.  Personally I have no interest in gambling when the business and the state are going to get their cut off the top.  But Ricky decided to play roulette and bought some chips.  Before the first spin, he put four five-dollar chips on random numbers.  One of them hit – NUMBER 26.  What it a coincidence that he had just run 26.2 miles?  He was up $155.  I told him he should quit while he was ahead and he did.  Then he wanted to try poker, which he said he didn’t understand.  I knew five-card poker, but this was the best four out of five cards.  We watched some practice hands from the dealer.  Ricky made the minimum wager of $10.  He got a pair and won another $10.  This time he quit because he still didn’t understand the game.  I told him he had just about covered an airline ticket.

Then we made our way outside, wandered back toward our motel and turned in. 

The next morning we went to breakfast together.  This time as we were being seated, I noticed there were two guys in back of us in the next booth.  There were a number of dishes on the table, all untouched, as they both had their heads down on their hands.  They were out and remained that way as we ate.  The manager showed up at 6 a.m. and tried to rouse them, staying it was no place to sleep.  One guy went to the restroom, but the other lay down on his side of the booth.

After gathering our things at the motel room, we were on our way to return the rental car.  We stopped to fill up.  I pumped and then declined a receipt.  I realized we had been told to bring one as proof of the fill-up, so I went inside to get one printed out. That’s when I experienced one of the more bizarre interactions with another person that I’ve had in my life.

A fairly young burly black man was trying to interact with a young black woman who had on a party dress.  She never said a word and quickly left after getting her receipt.  The man asked for a pack of cigarettes and then turned to me and said, “Hey, let me ask you a question!   Did you ever kill anybody?  You look like you are in your 40s or 50s.  Weren’t you in World War II or Vietnam?  Didn’t you ever kill anybody?”

I think my stunned silence ended the conversation.  After getting my receipt, I went out and saw the guy again hitting on the woman, who was trying to finish up pumping her gas.  I was thinking “good luck” to her.

The rest of the trip was fairly uneventful.  I enjoyed looking out the plane window as we began our flight back East.  I don’t believe I saw any of the Grand Canyon, but I learned that Arizona and Colorado are just full of other similar, if less spectacular, canyons and they look totally uninhabited and isolated from people.

When we landed in Philadelphia, we had a slight delay as Ricky’s car battery died while his dad was waiting in the cell phone lot for Ricky’s call to say we had arrived.  He got a jump from someone else and picked us up and we were quickly down the road, back to Delaware.

Recommendation:  The Hoover Dam Marathon is not a PR course.  Run it strictly for the scenery.  December is definitely the month to run one in Nevada.

The Route 66 Marathon

“Well if you ever plan to motor west

Just take my way, that’s the highway that’s the best

Get your kicks on Route 66”

Anyone who is old enough to have grown up in the 1950s probably remembers some version of the song Route 66 or the TV show of the same name. The song and the show are evocative of an era when gasoline was cheap and the roads were wide open.  It was the dream being sold by the automobile manufacturers and the show featured the newly introduced Corvette with accompanying orchestration by Nelson Riddle, which sounded like easy cruising in the wide open spaces:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcZ1k4d02KA

Route 66 was also done by Nat King Cole (jazzy), Chuck Berry (cross between jazzy and rock)) and the Rolling Stones, who turned Berry’s version into an early hard rock cover.

Today Route 66 is mostly gone, having been replaced by Interstates 40 and 44.  But for a short stretches it still exists, including running through Tulsa, OK.  That is most appropriate as Oklahoma is the state with the lowest gasoline tax in the country and its Interstates allow a legal speed of 75. The price of gas there is 50 cents lower than in Delaware.  Route 66 makes for a good theme, but the fact was that we would not actually be running on Route 66, although we would across it a few times as we ran around Tulsa.  That was actually better than a wide-open road in the country where we would have been exposed to the northerly wind for the entire race.

When I traveled out to Oklahoma with Ricky Singh to run the Route 66 Marathon, I was reminded of all this almost as soon as we picked up a rental car in Oklahoma City, before the 115 mile drive to Tulsa, because we passed an operating oil rig on the grounds of the airport and then sped down the highway at 75 mph.  The roads out there are straighter than back east and there is not a quarter of the traffic.  So 75 feels like 45.

Enough of the nostalgia and back to the reality of what we were going to have to deal with! At the car rental the saleswoman tried to scare us into buying insurance by warning about six to eight inches of snow.  But the weather forecasts predicted only a slight chance of snow the next day.  However it did predict unusually cold conditions for November 24 when the average high temperature is usually 56.  Instead we would deal with temperatures in the low 20s with a breeze the entire morning.

Luckily Ricky had reserved a room at the Hyatt, which was literally at the end of the starting corrals, four blocks west of the starting line.  The hotel was also only five blocks east of finish in the opposite direction.  I dropped the car in the parking garage and didn’t have to move it until we were ready to leave for the Tulsa airport.  After checking in, we walked to the race expo, which was six blocks away in a southwesterly direction.  We walked there, got our bibs, shoe tags, shirt and bag, scouted out the expo and headed back.  After an hour we headed downstairs to the restaurant attached to the hotel.  No dealing with the cold yet. By nine (ten east coast time) it was lights out.  I needed the rest for it had been a long day with my driving to BWI for the flight and then driving to Tulsa.

I arose at 5:10 to have some breakfast downstairs.  The choices were all overpriced, so I choose a bowl of oatmeal, the cheapest option.  Then I returned to the room to finish putting on my running gear.  My first goal was to stay warm.  So I wore: smart wool socks, a pair of athletic long underwear (which could be called tights), running pants, a smart wool shirt, another stretchy shirt built for cyclists, my 50 states shirt on the outside, a smart wool neck warmer, thin gloves inside mittens of which the mitten part would retract to allow the use of the fingers, and a wrap-around head covering.  I also inserted hand-warmers into my gloves and shoes.

At 7:30 we headed down stairs, out the hotel and walked the length of the corrals towards the start where the drop-bag areas and the portajohns were located.  We didn’t need to wait in line for the portajohns since we had just left the hotel.  Since I am in the 50 States Club, I dropped my bag with that group, which would have a special area at the end, shared with the Marathon Maniacs.  I figured this would allow me to find my bag more easily. 

There were four corrals, each a block long. There were over 2000 marathon participants and over 1000 half-marathoners.  After the 7:58 wheelchair start, the first wave started two minutes later.  Then the second wave, in which we both were seeded, started six minutes after that.  I started conservatively while Ricky went for it and disappeared from my view within five minutes.  After an initial mile of sub-9:30, I settled into a pace of just under or just over 10:00 as we traversed up and down hills. 

The corrals worked for me as everyone was moving at roughly my pace and I saw some of the same people for miles.  The fluid stops came within every two miles, which was sufficient on a cold day.  I mostly grabbed Gatorade, but made the mistake a couple times of taking water, which was slushy.  That I couldn’t drink, but later found when I finished that some water was frozen on my head covering near my chin.  Yes, it never warmed up.

After about five and a half miles, the course flattened out for about six miles.  They were my fastest miles as I clipped them off at about 9:30 pace.  But returning into town where the half-marathoners would finish, it got hilly again.  The 13^th mile was one of the steepest portions.  I continued to use the strategy I had begun to adopt several marathons earlier of not only race-walking up the hills, but also race-walking down the steep ones.  I figured I was saving my quads going down and I knew, from the way I passed people going up, that it was easier. 

During this uphill section I passed a guy who looked to be in my age-group.  About a mile later he re-passed me and may have gotten a lead of over 30 seconds on me, but remained in my sight.  I focused on chasing him as it helped me forget the now incessant ups and downs of the second half of the marathon. Eventually, several miles later, I caught up to him and struck up a conversation.  His name is George Beitzel from Lancaster, PA and is also on the 50 states quest with the race being in his 38^th state.  After a half mile, I told him I was speeding up on a downhill.  But after another few miles, after a long uphill he re-passed me.  I thought maybe he had me, but at about 22 miles, I passed him again going downhill.

At 24 miles I came upon Ricky walking.  He had done the first half under two hours, but he was cramping up and had to walk. He hadn’t eaten breakfast and didn’t drink anything for the first seven miles.  It’s possible that he was hampered by both of those deficits.  The course was about at the same level of difficulty as Clarence Demar Marathon in New Hampshire, where he did break four, so it probably wasn’t the terrain.

The last two miles were uphill, then downhill and then uphill again.  I did hold on to about a ten minute pace and finished in 4:18:38.  Since I did the first half in 2:07:30, the second half was less than four minutes slower.  Any time my slowing is this slight I am happy, especially when the first half was probably two to three minutes easier because of the flat section.  Ricky finished about a minute behind me and George Beitzel was about a minute behind Ricky. 

In all, I was 601^st out of 2,021 finishers and 436 of the 1,200+ males.  In my age group I was fourth out of 21.  While not placing, I was happy to see that I passed seven of these guys after 10K, of which five were after the half-marathon point.  It’s satisfying to know I adopted a strategy that was sensible for me.

My race pictures (which I won’t purchase) are located here: http://www.marathonfoto.com/Marathon/Williams-Route-66-Marathon-2013/LastName/MCCORQUODALE/BibNumber/3004/offering/myMarathonfotos/RaceOID/22252013F1/Language/en?utm_source=SilverpopMailing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=0%20Proofs%20Online%20ENG-SPA%206PM%20(6)

A couple comments on them:  In top left photo, after the finish, I am NOT as miserable as I look.  The photographer just happened to catch me when I blinked. Several of the finishing photos clearly show the ice frozen on the covering of my chin.  The bottom photo in the third column is a picture of me ascending in the thirteen mile one of the steepest areas of the course.  I was using my race walk strategy.  The woman in the background in a raspberry colored top had a sign on her back that said it was her 50^th marathon.  There was a sign over an underpass near the end congratulating her.

After finishing and receiving the humungous medal, I didn’t spend much time in the food area.  I took a bottle of recovery drink and a bottle of water and headed off to retrieve my bag.  Finding it, I stripped off everything on top, which was totally soaked and put on three other dry layers.  Then I headed towards my hotel, walking past the Center of the Universe area on which people were invited to detour in the last mile.  I hadn’t bothered with that, but did walk over the spot on which if one stands and calls out, there is supposed to be an echo that only the person standing there can hear.  (In some instances that’s known as a hallucination, but I digress.)

After Ricky and I got showers, we headed for the airport.  Problems came up right away.  His Garmin was telling us to go in a certain direction, but the marathon was still going on.  We had to detour several times in order to get to a place where we were allowing to cross the course.  Then, while driving on the Interstate, I suddenly had a cramp in my right adductor thigh muscle and had to pull over to get out and walk it off.  Pulling into the rental car return lane, we found ourselves behind a car carrier truck, which had mistakenly pulled into the lane and could not go forward because the clearance was less than eight feet.  So all the cars had to back out of the lane before the truck could back out.  This took over ten minutes.  Arriving at the rental return area, we stood for five minutes behind other customers before the clerk could come out of the booth to scan the car.  This did not seem like a big deal until I returned home and saw in an email that I was being charged $23.69 per hour for two hours late.  We knew that we had no choice on the first hour, but we actually were checked in one minute beyond the first hour.  I had to write a protesting email and then another, this time requesting a phone number, before being told the second hourly charge would be credited back.

We finally had some time to grab some food and a beer at the airport.  Then we discovered the flight was delayed.  Bad weather had already hit Dallas and we were lucky we weren’t there.  After boarding the delayed flight, it took an inordinate amount of time for the plane to actually have its doors closed and to begin taxiing.  Since our connecting flight in Atlanta was originally scheduled to leave only 38 minutes after we landed, we knew it was going to be tight.  Those trying to make connecting flights were allowed to leave the plane first.  We dashed to the other flight, only a few spaces up the terminal from the one we had just left.  But we were too late as the doors had just closed.

The next flight was three hours later.  The person handling the arrangements originally intimated that there were no seats available and we would either have to go on stand-by or take a different flight to Charlotte and make another connection.  But while doing the computer work, the man, who was from Jamaica, asked Ricky where he was from originally.  When Ricky replied “India”, the man started a conversation about cricket, about which Ricky knows a lot, including the situations of some professional teams.  I will always believe that conversation worked wonders as all of a sudden the man printed out two boarding passes for the direct flight to BWI.  When we did board, we found we were seated very near the entry door, an area Ricky call “poor man’s first class”.

There were no other hitches to our trip, but we still had to get to my car in long-term parking and then drive back to Delaware. I believe I actually turned in an 1:40 A.M., making it an almost 20-hours-awake day.  THAT was the tougher marathon!

Recommendation:  Weather in the 20s was an anomaly.  With relatively mild weather, if you want to run a marathon in Oklahoma, it’s a good one.  Everything is done well from the expo, race organization, water stops.  The food seemed a bit sparse after the race.  There was a beer area and the bibs had two tickets.  But who wants to stand around drinking light beer in cold weather.  The course has some good scenic areas, running along a lake for a while and passing through some pass neighborhoods.  With the hills, it’s not a PE course.