I ran the half distance of the 2010 Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon.

Packet Pickup
I went down to Oklahoma City to pick up my packet at the expo on Friday night. I thought I had plenty of time, but there was some event that night and the whole downtown-bricktown area was packed. I had to park by the library and art museum, and run several blocks to the Cox Convention Center. I made it into the building at about 7:50, found my bib, picked up 5 other bibs for other people (my wife & daughter did the 5K), and went into the expo to find the packets. I picked up all the bags of stuff and had time to look at one booth before they started turning off the lights. So I just made it.

Pre-Race
We stayed at a Hilton Homesuites hotel on west Reno, a few miles west of downtown OKC. It was nice, although hotels.com kept selling rooms that they didn't have and they had to deal with that. They also gave us a smoking room but the smell was pretty mild.

I needed a way to carry gels and my phone(/camera/mp3 player) so I grabbed an Amphipod belt at the expo. I really liked my Amphipod clip-on pocket (temporarily lost), and this works just as well. It has a nice wide belt and padding on the pocket. I had no problem fitting an iPhone, ear buds, car key, and four gels, and I really didn't notice it was there. I also hung my bib number on the the front with a piece of stretchy shock cord.

On race morning we arrived downtown around 6:00 (start was at 6:30) and in the great sea of cars looking for parking I just used one of the lots labeled on the marathon map and found a spot a block away from the bombing memorial. I said goodbye to my family at the 5K gate and walked a couple of blocks around to the end of the marathon line.

The Race
I started near the 12:00 min pace area and it took 15-16 minutes to cross the start line. I was maybe 80% through the crowd. We were running by the time we crossed the line so I think most people had lined up where they were supposed to start.

For ~23,000 we were spread out enough that it did not seem crowded once we started running.

The half course had around nine official water stops. I walked through each one of these and usually drank two cups of water, or water + sports drink when available. Most of them had pretzels, and I ate a couple of these each time. One station on the half course (and another on the full course) had Gu. They had a few portable toilets in the first few miles, but I don't remember seeing them after about mile 4 or 5. The aid stations were all loaded with volunteers.

There were lots of unofficial aid stations along the course, a few live bands playing, lots of music, lots of people with signs, lots of kids, people cheering, people handing out candy bar pieces, lots of high-fives, all sorts of stuff. I don't recall any section of the entire half marathon that was empty. People really came out to cheer on the runners. It was very impressive.

Overall I stayed pretty constant the whole race. I had my first gel at 1:00 hour and more or less one every half hour after that. I had some minor-to-medium runners highs, and no bonking. I took it easy the whole race, and didn't try to push the pace until after mile 10. I negatively split the race, running the 2nd half about one minute per mile faster than the first half. Walking through all the water stops dropped my average pace by one minute per mile. I listened to music for about the last half. I can't recall any other strategies or tactics that worked or did not work.