Cowtown Half Marathon & 5K Report

First of all, I want to say thank you to all of our friends and family. You guys have been so supportive over the last week. We miss Brennan so much, but your support has helped us pick up our feet and try to move forward with our lives. I struggled to write this post after Brennan passed away a week ago, but writing about racing and racing itself is helping me to move forward. In that spirit, here's my Cowtown race report:

Friday night before the race was so fun! Mindi and Jonathan got into town around 6:00 p.m., and we visited for a while before heading to downtown Fort Worth for dinner. We had a great time catching up over dinner, and headed home so Mindi and I could prep all of our things for Saturday morning’s race. The night before a race is always time intensive – read the race directions, pin the bib, get everything packed into my SPI belt, decide what to wear, etc. etc. The hour-by-hour forecast was not promising; it was basically going to be cold with wind gusts not to drop below 25 miles per hour. The weatherman hit the nail on the head, too, because I heard the wind howling outside my window Saturday morning before I got out of bed.

Saturday morning was so cold! However, I hate to get hot on a run. I decided to wear a short sleeve technical shirt, a long sleeve technical shirt, shorts, a hat, an ear warmer, and gloves. I used the bib clips on my SPI Belt to hold my bib, just in case I needed to remove my long-sleeve shirt. We ate our traditional bagel with peanut butter and honey and cup of coffee, and we were off. The traffic getting into downtown was crazy, but we finally found a great parking spot. David, Mindi and Jonathan were all running in the 5K which didn’t start until 8:15. My race started at 7:30, so I took off for the start line while they checked our bags and tried to stay warm. I went to the intersection listed as the start line, only to realize that I made a bad mistake. There were barricades all around the start, and none of the runners could get through. It was a giant mass of people trying to push to the start line before the gun went off. Looking back, it is pretty funny how panicked everyone was. I wanted to yell, “We are wearing chips, people, so your time won’t start until you cross the mat at the start line! Chill!” Frankly, I was much more comfortable in this group than I ordinarily would have been because it kept me warm.

I somehow got through one of the barricades and found a position around the 2:10 half marathon pace team. My goal was a 10:18 pace; this is slower than my previous half marathon paces, but I wanted to be conservative considering the tendinitis in my foot. We took off and everything was fine until we made our way out of downtown; we were heading toward the bridge on Main Street when the wind hit us. The entire group of runners let out a collective gasp – this was going to be interesting. I really settled in early and my foot wasn’t bothering me. Looking back, I probably should have picked up the pace at this point, but I was concerned with finishing without an injured foot. About half-way through the race, I realized that my foot was not going to be a problem. I picked up the pace and finished with a time of 2:06:08. If you want to see just how hilly the course was, click HERE. This was my actual run recorded by my Garmin watch. Click "player" in the upper right hand corner and then press the play button in the gray bar at the top. This will show you all the hills on the course, and give you all the other information about my race that you never really wanted to know.

I definitely did not run my best time, but the result gives me a lot of hope. First, I know I can run faster than I did. Second, the course was hilly and the weather conditions stunk. I really feel like I can break two hours in the half this year, and I think I have decided to try to do it on April 26th in Oklahoma City. I will keep you posted.

David, on the other hand, had an awesome race! He set a personal record in the 5K, clocking a time of 22:15! That's a 7:08 per mile average pace. He finished 77th out of 3088 finishers, and 8th out of 175 finishers in the 25 to 29 age group. He wanted to break 22:00, and I think that will probably happen soon.

All in all, Cowtown is definitely not the most organized race I have attended, but it has its good points. On the negative side, the bag check was apparently a disorganized nightmare (I’m not sorry I had to miss this), the course is really hilly, especially at the end, and some of the water stops weren’t well-run (at one stop, I finally gave up after waiting over a minute for a cup of water). On the plus side, it is right in my backyard, so it is one of the cheapest ways for me to run a big race. The race sells $10 technical shirts to entrants, which are a steal, and the food and beverages after the race were awesome! The medal is really nice, too. I will definitely do this race again, if for no other reason than to get the other four medals in Cowtown’s 5-medal series.

It was a great weekend with good friends, all of whom were in town from Amarillo. We miss all of those Amarillo runners, and we’re not sure we’ll meet any runners quite as great as them here in Fort Worth.