Oklahoma City Marathon 2008 - Friday

Jeff Odell is running the 2008 Oklahoma City Marathon and recording impressions of the event over three days.  This is Day 1.

Arrived in Oklahoma City to beautiful weather Friday afternoon and immediately noticed it was marathon week-end.  I saw 3 or 4 volunteer T Shirts on people working in the airport as well as a large banner at the information booth.

I made uneventful connections with the hotel shuttle and made my way to my home away from home, the Colcord Hotel.  Turns out Therese made another excellent hotel choice, as it is across from the Cobb Convention Center, location of the expo, and pretty central to the entire calendar of events.

I headed over to the expo in the afternoon.  Packet pick-up was pretty easy and the mood was upbeat.  After checking out the typical booths you might find at most expos, I wandered over to the "In memory of..." table.  Lynne D. had reminded me not to miss this.  After looking through a list of the 165 victims, I selected George Michael Howard.  Mr. Howard transferred only 2 weeks before the bombing to escape the hustle of San Francisco.  His wife had not yet arrived in their new home before the tragedy struck.  In the longer bio supplied at the booth it mentioned he was also a Peace Corps volunteer.

The second can't miss on Lynne's agenda was getting set up for the Pancake breakfast.  I stopped by the First Church booth, determined via a free sample that the pancakes were delicious, and grabbed a flyer to check it out marathon morning.  I also plan to check out their Saturday Night Marathon Service where they will bless my shoes.  I'll take all the good mojo I can get.

Shortly thereafter, Bill Rodgers and Dick Beardsley spoke to the expo.  Bill is retired from marathons and is running the half marathon.  Dick is running the marathon for the second time, although for both of them the week-end is an annual event.   They spent a little time on running tips but told a lot of great running stories and commented on how the Oklahoma City Marathon had grown over the years.  They threw out a number of 17,000 runners participating in all the events this week-end.  Looking at the web site, that number seems to be correct.  It is a record for the marathon this year.

After checking back in to the hotel and catching up on some work, I headed out to walk the Bricktown entertainment district.  It seems like it would be a great place for a getaway week-end - lots of bars and clubs in a safe environment.  Being a boring "in preparation for the marathon" non-partier, I ended up attending the Oklahoma Red Hawks/Arkansas Isotopes game in the Bricktown stadium - a nice new minor league park.  It was a a nice cool evening - weather I'm hoping will carry over to Sunday's race.

Turned in early and tried to get good "night before the night before" rest since my sleep pattern isn't always the best race evening.  Looking forward to the memorial and other events tomorrow.

On to Day 2...