Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon winners Jordan Kinley and Catherine Odell have more in common than winning their first marathons on the same day.

Both are Oklahoma residents, OU master’s students and both were OU runners. And when they turned onto Classen Boulevard 21 miles into OKC’s April 26 marathon, neither first timer was sure they wanted to continue.

“It was probably the least fun 12 minutes of running I’ve had in recent memory,” Kinley said. “There was no part of it that was fun at all.”

Odell had similar thoughts, but battled through the strong head winds on the three mile stretch of the race thinking only of the finish line. Odell’s pace dropped from 6:45 per mile to 8 minute miles.

“I was getting discouraged mentally, which is where you get beat down in the marathon,” she said. “I just kept thinking it’s almost over. Four more miles [to go] of 26 isn’t that bad.”

Both made it through the tough, windy stretch and the entire 26.2-mile course faster than their competitors. Odell beat her closest competitor by five minutes with a time of 3:10.16. Kinley, finishing with a time of 2:27.19, was more than 10 minutes ahead of the second place finisher, but said he could have pushed even harder.

“I think I could have run faster,” he said. “I was fatigued at the end but not to the point of passing out.”

Kinley, who used a 40-day training plan, said some people were surprised with his win, but he came in knowing he could be near the top.

“I didn’t necessarily know I was going to win, but I thought I might have a shot,” he said.

Odell, who began training for the event with her fiance and friends in December, said she expected to do well and had a plan in place to ensure that she did.

“I wanted to win,” she said. “That was my goal. I had two teammates from OU run with me. One ran 11 miles with me. The other did the last six. I had people with me the whole time. It was very systematic.”

Unlike some big marathons, the OKC Memorial doesn’t award prize money, so Kinley and Odell got only bragging rights. At least for now, distance running is something the two do for other reasons than prize money. Kinley works at OK Runner in Norman and said he enjoys the social aspect of the running world. His boss and many of his customers were at the race to support him. Odell, who teaches middle school in Oklahoma City, said she also uses running to socialize and make the workouts easier.

“When you’re running with people that kind of makes it fun,” she said. “We would get together; go for runs, and it was almost like we were hanging out.”

With their first marathon out of the way, Kinley and Odell both say they hope to do more in the future. For now, Kinley is taking a two to three week break doing light workouts only and wants to enter some shorter races.

“I’ll go on the record and say I might go after the state 5k record on the roads,” he said. “It’s much faster than I’ve run before, but I think it’s reasonable.”

Kinley plans to run either the U.S. Marathon Championships or the Chicago Marathon this fall and push for a time closer to 2:19, the Olympic trial standard.

Odell also says another marathon may be in her future, but for now she is running “whenever” and keeping up with one long run a week because even a day without running makes her miss it.

“Running is just something I do,” she said. “It’s not a burden really, or something I feel like I have to do. It’s just what runners do.”