On November 4th, while most Oklahomans were sporting orange or crimson and watching the Bedlam game, Sapulpan Sharleen Dupee was halfway across the country completing an amazing achievement: she was running the New York City Marathon. It was her first-ever marathon, and she was fighting an injury.
Dupee, whose husband Jonathan owns Freedom Electric in Sapulpa, has been running half-marathons for years, but had never done a full marathon since she began running regularly about ten years ago.
“The year I turned 40, I wanted to set some goals and make some healthy lifestyle changes, and my sister and I decided we would start training for halves,” she told Sapulpa Times in a recent interview. “That’s when I kind of started running, just kind of here and there not real serious until probably about 2017 I started doing more and more.”
At that point, Dupee says she got “the bug” and got hooked. “Once you started doing them, it’s kind of addictive. So, I just kept doing them and of course, there’s a great running community.” She says that her group of runner friends became more than just running friends. “You just you started doing life together, as well as the healthy part of it,” she said. This year she turned 50 and decided to step it up a notch. “I thought, ‘well, I might as well do some big things this year.'”
The New York City Marathon is part of a class of marathons called “World Marathon Majors”—there are six in all, which take place in Tokyo, Boston, London, Berlin, Chicago and New York City. These are the most renowned marathons and tens of thousands participate in them. In this year’s New York City Marathon specifically, there were runners from all 50 states and 148 other countries. Of the almost 52,000 starters, 99% finished.
Just getting in is a challenge; you have to time-qualify, or you can raise money for charity to get in, or you can enter your name in a lottery and be one of the 3,000 participants to be chosen at random. Dupee was one of the lucky 3,000 who had their name drawn in the lottery.
Though she usually does half-marathons, Dupee says she always told herself if she did a full marathon, it would have to be a big one, like one of the ‘Majors. “I knew the lottery deadline was approaching and I was just like, “oh, I’ll just toss my name in. I had applied before but had never gotten it.”
Dupee says she entered the lottery and then promptly forgot all about it. “I had forgotten they were doing the drawing until a running friend posted on Facebook that she hadn’t gotten in, and I said, ‘oh that’s right, that’s today,’ and I pulled up my email and holy cow, I got it.”
Now that the dream was becoming a reality, Dupee said she immediately began pivoting her training to prepare. “It’s a similar program, you just start running more miles,” she said. “You have a year to prepare, so each week is longer, and it does take a lot more time.” She also says she knew she needed to work on specific areas in order to strengthen her endurance, and she knew it’d be a commitment.
“You want to be as consistent as you can be, so I did have to change things a little bit—devote more time and say no to a lot more things,” she said.
Sharleen said that competing in the marathon was amazing, despite the differences between running there and back here in rural Oklahoma. “New York City has a lot of smells,” she said. “In Oklahoma it’s more fresh air.”
But she added that it seemed that the entire city was supportive of the event.
“It was amazing. I mean, the crowd support … just the atmosphere and people cheering, it was like a block party almost the entire way.”
Two weeks before the day of the race, a case of Iliotibial Band Syndrome set in on her left knee and Dupee said she had to pivot again to try to get to a condition where she could still participate. “I was trying to rehab it and do all the things to make it better and I was fine for about the first nine miles, and then after that it was not happy.”
Dupee knew she’d come too far to succumb to the injury, now. “I just kept moving forward,” she said. “It’s hard to explain, but you’re on such a high from all the crowd support and everybody’s so happy for you, that it was secondary.”
Even with the injury, she completed the marathon in 5 hours, 53 minutes; a time that Dupee says she’s pleased with. “At some point, I was just like, ‘like let me finish under six.'”
Now, back home and fully recovered, Dupee says that she’s keeping an eye for her next big marathon while simultaneously working on her bucket list of a half-marathon in every state. “I’m up to about 16 states,” she said. “I’m gonna keep working towards that too, because that’s a that’s a good distance—you feel like you’ve been challenged, but you don’t need a lot of time to recover.”
And despite the dedication and effort it required, she still says she’s like to compete in a full marathon again. “I do want to do another Major World Marathon,” she said. “I’d like to do Chicago, London, Berlin…any one of those.”
Sharleen said that the joy of running the New York City marathon didn’t stop when she reached the finish line. “I think it just really made me realize how much I enjoy the sport,” she said. “Just being outside, and the community of people that it brings you in touch with.” She also said she hopes more people are able to discover the joy of running. “It’s a very cool experience, and I would encourage anyone thinking about it to give it a try, because it really is helps with your mental health and stress and everything else.”
She also said she’s proud of the path she’s creating for her two daughters to follow in. Neither of them are regular runners yet, but at least one of them is beginning to get more consistent at it. “I’m trying to teach them that, yeah, we can do hard things. It’s great to see them taking on that habit of thinking.”
