Faith, Hope and Art: Cowtown 2015

Tuesday, March 3, 2015

Cowtown 2015

One of the races Doug and I do together is the Cowtown. We make a weekend of it and enjoy staying in a hotel for a couple of nights and doing things we want to do without our children.. and we race on Saturday and Sunday mornings.

Well... except for this year. We had ice and snow for DAYS! This isn't a big deal if you live in areas that get this junk for entire seasons, but in Texas, we get it for 30 minutes and then it moves on. But this week, it lingered. And then it came back.

Saturday's 5k and 10k races were cancelled. We will complete a virtual race in the next week or so in order to complete our challenge race. But early Saturday afternoon the ice started melting, so we loaded up and fled our house while we had the chance!

We got to Fort Worth and this is what we found outside the expo. DANGEROUS!!!! It was sooo icy!

picture by Libby

But as you can see, we weren't the only crazy people! These are the lines for packet pickup! This race normally has thirty thousand runners for the weekend of races... with the weather, everyone needed to pick up their race packets in the same 12 hour window. insane.

About 5pm the race directors cancelled the ultra and the full, but decided to keep the 1/2 marathon. Doug and I drove the course. It was BAD!

At that point, we decided that there was no way we would be able to run.. It just wouldn't be safe. So we ate a big mexican dinner and chilled.

BUT.... workers for the city of Fort Worth and the race worked ALL NIGHT and put down 14 tons of sand.. so we decided heck, we are already nuts, lets just race.

from Cowtown's facebook page!

It also helped that my sister Libby and my running friends were going to go ahead and try.

So at 8am we found ourselves standing out in front of Will Rogers Colosseum in freezing temps and drizzle getting ready to run 13 miles in slush. And we were excited about it. Normally on Sunday morning, there are about 15 thousand runners. While it wasn't as packed as normal, there were still a lot of us out there!

Libby and I were in corral 4 and Doug and my BRF's (best running friends) were in corral 5. Cowtown changed up the corral structure and start this year and it was SOOO MUCH BETTER!! In the past it was a free-for-all at the start and you were lucky to not get trampled. This year the start was slower and more methodical and you didn't feel like you were going to get run over before you made it to the start line! It helped that there were fewer people, sure, but it was a significant change for the better.

The course was slushy and at times dangerous. But there were volunteers or cones at almost all of the super slick areas. I'm calling it an adventure race and Doug has labeled it a Steeplechase as we jumped many a water obstacles!

Prior to the race, Libby and I went in hoping for a time goal. But Sunday morning, we knew that a PR was not going to happen! Our goal was to finish without falling.. and to have fun.

The first mile of the course is insanely packed with people.

from Cowtown Facebook page

And then you turn and go down into the park. oh my!

You can't even tell that it is Texas here!!

And here is Doug on the course. So glad Alisa took pictures too!

Along the way I made Libby stop and take pictures!

And looks like I accidently took one at one point trying to put my phone away... see I'm having fun.. I'm smiling even when the camera isn't on me! :)