On a scale of 1 to 10, you're a 13.1!

When we were planning our trip to Newfoundland, the return flight had to get us back to Oklahoma City for a very important event. We drove in last night so we could be here to see the Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon. This race memorializes the 168 people that died in the Murrah Building bombing in April, 1995. It's usually ran in April, but the race was cancelled in 2020 and and postponed until the autumn in 2021. While the last race had 24,000 runners, this year was limited to a mere 12,000. You can see runners filling the width of the street for as far as you can see in the picture below.

While many of the 12,000 runners left an hour ago on the full 26.2 mile marathon route, we're here to watch the half-marathoners that are lined up now. We are especially interested in that tall good-looking runner in the white shirt on the fourth row from the front right in the center of the picture below. He's the only one in the picture below that is following the suggested protocol of keeping his mask on until the race starts. It's a little hard to keep a 6-foot social distance with thousands of people huddled up to the start line.

All the pictures are a little fuzzy because Denisa is taking them from the broadcast on television. With thousands of people running in downtown Oklahoma City, roads are closed and the traffic is crazy. It was impossible to be at the starting line, so we had to be content to watch the start on television . . . and they're off!

This is Blake's first race ever, and he's been training for several months. For some reason, he couldn't get his mind to go to sleep last night. He estimated he only got two hours of rest before his very early alarm clock went off this morning. That's not exactly the most rested state to start a 13.1 mile run today. Denisa took one more blurry picture, as we watched Blake (in the center of the picture below) run right off the screen.

That means it was time for "Team Blake" to go into action. Our team includes our daughter-in-law Claire, and her parents. Armed with signs of encouragement, the five of us and two dogs headed to the first place that we can intersect the runners at Edgemere Park. 

That's almost a one-mile walk from their house, and we needed to hustle because Blake estimated he would arrive around 8:12 to 8:25 (depending on when the race actually got started and how his run was going). He arrived for this picture at 8:12, and he gave us a smile and a thumbs up. He looks great for having already run 6 miles this morning!

After we gave him encouragement at Edgemere Park, we took our signs and dogs and quickly walked the mile toward Classen Boulevard to see the racers again. Blake estimated it would take him around 22 minutes, so we had to quickly walk our shorter path to that point. The mother instincts in Denisa came out when we saw him at this intersection. After nine miles, he looks a little tired and he's three minutes slower than the pace he wanted.

Mark had downloaded the race app so that we could watch Blake's progress this morning. We could also watch other friends if we had their race numbers. It's interesting that we can also see the official water stations. Are those red crosses on the map emergency medical stops available? Now Denisa is really worried about her baby!

After Blake ran out of our sight, we could only watch Mark's phone screen to watch his progress until the finish line. He was planning on a time under one hour and 40 minutes, so he was a little disappointed with his 1:44:06 finish time. While his first miles were at a pace just over 7 minutes, he slowed to almost 8 minutes by the end of the race. Personally, we think that running 8-minute miles for 13.1 miles is amazing!

We waited here to see several more friends run by, and then we headed towards the finish line to pick up Blake. He doesn't have his phone, but he told Claire where to park and where he would walk after the race. We decided that we wouldn't be walking anywhere if we had just ran 13 miles! We got a picture of the two of them after the race, with that well-deserved medal around Blake's neck.

We drove him back to their house, and had a little snack. Both of the mothers celebrated birthdays this month, so they had cupcakes for us at their house. Denisa is really spreading her 60th birthday party out this year.

Then surprisingly, Blake wanted to walk down to the race route to encourage other runners. Even though he's been finished for an hour by this time, we are seeing plenty of half-marathoners pass by. One even noticed his race bib, saw his medal, and smiled and called him a "show-off."

At this point we are still seeing thousands of marathoners and half-marathoners go by. Some are walking and some are still jogging. The marathoners have gone around 19 miles by this point, and everyone is very tired. They all have different reasons for putting their bodies through this, including this veteran that carried an American flag for the entire race.

We had never witnessed a race with so many runners before, and it was a fun day. While all the racers went further, we managed to log in seven miles ourselves. The weather was beautiful, and we couldn't be prouder of our racer! On a scale of 1 to 10, we think Blake is a 13.1!