PR at Cowtown

This story starts early in the week when I found out a buddy of mine was coming into Fort Worth to run the Cowtown 50k. We chatted a bit on Facebook about getting together at the start and then started talking about time goals. I mentioned that my PR was 5:50 and I was hoping to go under 5:30 this year as I felt like I was in better shape and the body felt pretty good. He said that if we ran together we could make 5:15 and if things went well we could shoot for 5:00.

Well it decided to get warm this weekend, real warm. It was 65 degrees when I left the house at 5:30am and headed to the race. There was dew all over my car and the ground so the humidity had to be extremely high as well. It was supposed to get up into the upper 70's by the end of the race so I figured it was going to be a rough day. Got to the race site and chatted with several runners and found my way to the back of the start area and met up with John, Ryan, and Jason. (BTW, Ryan and Jason put on a fabulous 50k in the middle of the summer here in Texas called El Scorcho! Great run that everyone should try to run.)

When it's time to go we start off at a very nice and relaxed pace. I didn't even wear my garmin for this run and just wanted to have fun and let John keep track of the pace and how we were doing. It was obvious how humid it was as early in the race my shirt was already soaked with sweat. I'm a heavy sweater as it is, but 4 miles into the race is way too early for this to be happening, especially at the pace we were running. We went through the 10k mark in just under an hour so we were starting off nice and slow. I'm glad I was running with John because I have a bad habit of going out to fast and regretting it later in a race.





The next section had us running through the Stockyards which was nice and very good crowd support and then made the trip back into downtown which was a nice steady climb but not too steep. We were getting loose and decided to pick up the pace a bit and see if we could bank a few minutes for later in the race. We did a good job without extending ourselves. After leaving the downtown area, we were headed South and running into a nice headwind and some section where it was spitting a little rain. Thank goodness for the cloud cover, and breeze which seemed to keep out body temps in check. We hit the the 15.5 mile mark in just a little over 2 and a half hours. We felt good but didn't think we were going to negative split the second half but we were just going to keep the pace going for as long as we could.

Running through the area surrounding TCU was great. There were several residences that had cold beer available and we grabbed some at 2 of the locations. Not sure if it helped but we felt better for a little while after each stop. :-)






Heading back North we had the wind at our back and we could tell it was getting warmer as well. This is when we started relying on each other. If I was feeling a little bad or hurting John would take the lead and I would just fall in behind him and concentrate on his legs moving in front of me. If he had a bad spot I would take the lead. We seemed to feed on each other and only a few times did we both feel bad at the same time, then we did a little walking.

The roughest part of the race is the 5 mile section where we break off from the marathon route and run along the river for 2.5 miles and come back. The only support you get out there is from your fellow runners and the 2 aid stations. I gotta give props to the aid station at the turnaround as they had defizzed Coke sitting in a bucket of ice. I threw all 12 ounces down and felt like a new man, at least for another mile. The last 3 miles we didn't say much to each other but just kept our feet moving knowing we were getting close. We knew our dream goal of 5 hours wasn't going to happen but still thought we could get 5:15. A little under a mile left one of John's friends came out and met us and helped us get to the finish line. I almost cramped up during the final sprint, well it really wasn't a spring just a little bit faster pace and we made it in 5:15 and some change.






It was a great day for me as I PR'd by 35 minutes even though the weather wasn't in our favor. I have to thank John for all the support and even though we helped each other there was no way I come close to that effort alone. I highly recommend running with a buddy if you can find one as they can be a great asset.

Not sure what is next for me. I've made it through the winter running season and now I've got kids soccer and basball that will keep me busy until May. I'll try and stay in shape and run a few races when I'm not too busy.