OKC Marathon 2020

As you know, my time in OKC was marked by annually running the Half Marathon of the OKC Memorial Marathon held every April. My goal was to get under 2 hours. You can find in this blog my attempts. 

In 2020, I was set to try again. I had a very strong fall running season. In fact, my goal at 5K races was to get down to 8 minutes per mile. My best race in November was at 8:01 per mile so I was feeling pretty good about my chances for the half marathon. 

I wanted to give myself 13 weeks of training to get ready. I'd increase my weekly mileage from my normal 12 miles up to as much as 22 miles. I also started tackling hills much more. I had heard that incorporating speed training into the routine would help so I was doing that. It was wearing me down but I was determined to stay at it. My normal week consisted of 3 days of weight lifting and 3 days of running. I'd always take Sundays off. For this half marathon training I went to two days of lifting weights and four days of running. 

After 8 weeks of training I was up to doing a long run of 9 miles and feeling strong. I had dropped a few pounds but I was never carrying too much weight anyway so that wasn't an issue. Then in March Corona Virus 19 got serious and hit the US with a vengeance. I thought that my race would be safe given that it was towards the end of April but it got canceled also. It made sense, the race would draw 26,000 runners with about 15,000 spectators. That would have been too much of a chance for the virus to spread.

So the half marathon 2 hour challenge will just have to wait. They rescheduled the race for the beginning of October of 2020. There was no way to keep training at that intensity for that long. I looked for other races but they all got canceled too. I looked for a 5K race to see if I could break my 8 minute per mile goal. In the end, I just settled to keep striving hard to stay healthy and fit. As I have stated before, I really despise running. It was goals like the 5K races and the half marathon which gave me the motivation to get out there daily. 

I have no regrets. Public safety had to come first.