A first-time marathon runner captured the overall title and a 50-year-old won the women’s division in the second annual Route 66 Marathon on Sunday in Tulsa, Okla., reported the Tulsa World.
Scott Downard, 24, of Norman, Okla., was a cross-country runner in high school and the University of Oklahoma. Sunday was his first marathon, and he won the 26.2-mile race in 2 hours, 30 minutes, 41 seconds.
Claudia Kassen, 50, of Des Peres, Mo., won the women’s title in 3:09:47. She was a Olympic marathon trials entry and has won several other marathon races around the country.
In the half-marathon, Clay Mayes III, 20, of Claremore, Okla., won in 1:10.41. The top female finisher in the half-marathon was Mindi Rice, 32, of Lewisville, Texas, in 1:26:00.
In the quarter-marathon, John Millin, 24, of Leawood, Kan., prevailed with a time of 39:22. The top female was Amy Boren, 17, of Vinita, Okla., at 47:31.
Nearly 3,000 people finished, and that doesn’t even count the one-mile kids’ race. Unofficial results can be found here.
The course was moved a bit south from downtown because of complaints about hills near the finish. Downtown church-goers also found it difficult to work through the maze of closed streets last year. The course included a little more than a mile of its Mother Road namesake, on Southwest Boulevard over the Arkansas River.
Weather conditions were nearly perfect for long-distance running, with temperatures in the 50s and 60s with overcast skies. I saw few distressed-looking runners, and personnel in the first-aid tents looked bored.
To give you an idea of the scale of this event, this is video of the start of the half-marathon, not the main event:
And runners kept streaming through two more minutes after I hit the “stop” button.