Oklahomal City Marathon

We are back!!! It was such a great week-end in Oklahoma City. Awesome is the word. I had a good time meeting Hal and Rose and the v-teamers: Jeff Litton, Rick Crawford, Elizabeth Pospick and Jim King (Jim is technically not a v-teamer but a very nice guy all the same). We "recruited" him at the expo to fill in an empty spot on the Quad relay team. We also met Jeffrey Altenburg who was running the whole marathon. The marathon was very nicely organised, in fact I thought there would be some boo-boos considering that it was an Inaugural Marathon. But besides a few minor issues, things went very smoothly. Friday: Reached OKC, had dinner at the Zio's Italian Restaurant in Bricktown. Bricktown is this San Antonio River-walk look-alike. I loved the atmosphere there. After that, went and saw the OKC memorial in the evening. The place was so sobering and moving, it is hard to put in words. Of course, I would have missed the nice evening entirely hadn't Hal graciously asked me to accompany him and Rose over to dinner. Thanks Hal! Saturday: The expo was tiny, compared to Chicago but still people were having a blast meeting each other and socialising. I spent the day at the expo, getting things organised for the participating v-team. We had some minor paper-work issues which were straightened out towards the afternoon. I even got to meet Bill Rodgers and get his autograph. The v-teams later got together and decided who was going to run which leg. For the Quad team, Hal would run the first one of 3.1 miles, Jeff, the 10 miler, Jim, the next 6.5 miles and I, the last 6.5 mile leg. Rick was running the first half and Elizabeth the second half for the Split team. Later, the v-team went over to the Pasta Party. I was walking over to the Pasta Party location accompanied by the impeccable Elizabeth. It was great talking about the v-team and the v-board and how crazy all of us are. We were even discussing the theoretical ramifications of holding the relay Champion Chip in the hand and how to get it across the chip-mat versus an ankle strap to speed up the exchange between the two relay members. We were talking so much that in fact, we got lost on the way. We started looking at the Dinner Ticket to figure out where to go next. All of a sudden, Joe Henderson came up behind us, as lost as we were. So the three of us started walking and talking (again). That did not work and after a while, we were still unable to find the darn place. We thought, let us ask some locals. Very quickly we found that, THERE WERE NO LOCALS AROUND!! All of the people around us were tourists!! After a bit, we found some locals and lo and behold, they had no clue where the location was either. Turns out, the place was barely a block away from the expo building and we had walked around the entire block and missed it!! hee hee. Anyway, we finally got in to meet our pasta. The food was very good. The supposedly excellent entertainment was unfortunatley, neither. We were forced to listen and even applaud to a group of youngish girls (and a couple of not so young ones) performing Karaoke Country Oldies. That experience was comparable to the suffering I felt at mile 19 in Chicago after hitting the wall. I wonder if the group's name was "Off-Key Mayhem" or something similar. Who knows. Luckily enough, the Karaoke Kamikazes stopped singing at us finally. The formalities began and people started to use the one microphone to express their opinions on various matters. One guy I think welcomed us and then another one talked about fund-raising and his marathon experience or something like that. The reason I don't know what really happened after the musical disaster ended is because WE COULDN'T UNDERSTAND A WORD OF WHAT THE PEOPLE WERE SAYING INTO THE MICROPHONE. We all saw lips moving but the language seemed to be totally foreign. The reason is that the hall in which the dinner was happening was creating more echoes than a dentist's cavity-filling nightmare. Finally the time came for the long-awaited discussion to happen. Hal Higdon, Bill Rogers and Tawni Gomes were going to discuss running and the Joe Henderson was the moderator of the discussion. I really still don't know Tawni Gomes well enough to tell who she was and why she was talking about running, but then, my ignorance has few known limits. Joe picked up the mic and began talking loudly into it, enunciating every syllable to make sure we all understood what he was saying. This did the trick. The crowd quieted down and in spite of the echoes, we were able to understand Joe. After talking for a few minutes, he introduced Hal in glowing terms and handed the mic to him. Hal stood up and started to talk when all of a sudden a guy entered the room from the door behind him and walked right in front of Hal almost tripping Hal in the process. The guy was totally unaware that he was walking in front of someone talking to an audience. In fact, Hal decided to chase him and followed him trying to get his attention in a joking manner but no luck. The guy did not even realise that the whole audience was laughing at the incident when he walked off. I concluded from that total lack of reaction that the guy was wearing headphones. Anyway. After Hal, Tawni talked for a few minutes about running and fitness and getting in shape etc.. After her, Bill talked for a couple of minutes about his experiences and what he was doing currently in the running field. That done, we left the place before the Karaoke Killers started singing at us again. The evening, thus, ended. Sunday: I had placed a wake-up call at the hotel for 6:00 am, but I was all dressed up and downstairs at 5:45. I bought some water and a banana from their special runners "breakfast" bar and was getting mentally ready. At around 6:15ish, I ran into Jeffrey and together we walked to the Start line. I stayed there since my bus (to reach my exchange point at 19.7 miles) was not leaving until 7:30 (a half hour after the race started). After the start of the race, I was bussed to the exchange area. We reached there around 8:30. With oodles of time to kill, I thought it would be good to use the porta-potty. The race organisers only had ONE out there for about two busloads of people. I got to another one (belonging to some private construction firm) and used that instead. I went back to play the waiting game. I met up with this girl Sarah from Dallas and had a good conversation with her. We began to critique each runners form as he/she ran by. We then talked about what kind of work we did in our civilian lives and so on and so forth. She had run Boston last year and was trying to get back in shape so that she could qualify next year again. Interesting person. Suddenly, I saw Elizabeth run by and I yelled out a cheer to her. She yelled back "Smile!....Smile!" and even though confused, I obeyed and smiled my biggest smile... A few yards down the road, she lifted her hands in frustration. Then I realised, OH! she wanted to know what "Mile" it was!! But she was out of earshot by then. I reeled in my smile and went back to talking to Sarah. Suddenly I heard my bibb number being called and I jumped up to meet Jim so that the chip exchange could take place and I would get on the way. I bid Sarah a hasty adieu and that was the last I saw of her. Jim ran in at warp factor 9 and screeched to a halt a few yards past the chip-mats. We exchanged a quick hand-shake and the ankle-chip-strap. Everything was a blur at that point for me. Hurry hurry!! get the chip on!!! THE CLOCK IS TICKING!! I tied the chip ankle strap onto my ankle and I was off! My 6.5 miles started off quite calmly. However, the hills soon came in and I was huffing and puffing away till I was red in the face to maintain a good pace. As if that were not enough, most of the uphill portion also included a strong wind blowing against the runners, making the task of running doubly difficult. The worst part was the few hundred yards before the finish line where it was a straight run but the wind was blowing especially hard. I remembered an older posting on the v-board where someone said that "he felt like he was running in place". That is what it felt like to me. Anyway, I finally built up speed and ran past Hal and Rose and Jim cheering me on from the crowds. That was too cool to see that they were all waiting for me!! I crossed the finish line and the total time for the team was 4:23:50. It took me around an hour and 15 minutes to run the 6.5 miles. Slower than my expected 60 minutes but what the heck. I wasn't running for time anyway. The time for the Split team (Rick and Elizabeth) was 4:15:51. Woo hoo!! I reached the hotel room, took a shower and departed for the airport to head back home. -- Richie BAKSHI