Cowtown Half Marathon Recap…

It has been two weeks since the race so it’s probably time to write my recap.  Overall, this was a great race.  I do have issue with the disqualification of the winner, but still this was a race that I would love to do again.

We stayed at the host hotel, so we got to take the shuttle to the start.  This was well worth it, in my opinion.  We didn’t have to deal with parking or anything on race day.  We just had to worry about getting ourselves to the shuttle and if we got good enough pictures on the way.

I think we did a pretty good job.  Can you tell we got up at about 4:45?  The gentleman on the bus that we got to take this picture was a good sport.  He didn’t look like he was there to run and you’ve gotta love a guy that will get up at the crack of dawn to come out and support someone that’s going to run a marathon/half marathon/relay or any other type of race.

One of the best things about this race?  The start and finish was located at a convention center.  It was cold when we got there and we got to wait inside.  And there were bathrooms that were not port-o-potties before the start of the race.  And we had time to take some more pictures before we headed out to the starting line.  I think we looked fabulous in our OK Runner shirts.

Soon it was time to head outside into the cold and get ready to get into our corrals for the start.  There were more pictures before the gun went off.

And one last pre-race group photo…

After this we headed to the starting line and got in the corrals we were supposed to start from.  It was still chilly, once you get in the corral it usually warms up a bit.  Not long after and we were off.  Patti, Rochelle and I were shooting for a sub 1:50 time so we started together.  Angie was with us, she was the only one running the full marathon started with us.  I kind of felt bad about that, I think the first couple of miles she ran with us hurt her later on, but she still ran her sub 4 hour full.

By mile 2 I was warm enough and the ear warmers came off.  I felt bad when my new purple sparkly sweaty band came off with it and had to come to a dead stop to pick it up.  I think I almost took a couple people down with me when I did that.  We settled into a pretty strong pace and the miles seemed to fly by.

Don’t get me wrong, the miles were hilly.  They were crazy hilly.  We ran through the stockyards and that was pretty painful.  Running on an uneven brick road felt like running through sand and it was a little hilly getting out of there.  The hardest part of the race was around mile nine when there was a hill that lasted for about the entire mile.  We could see it ahead of us for at least a mile before we actually got to it and it was intimidating.  It was a bridge that just seemed to go up and up.  Once you got over that you thought it would be easy, but then it turned to the right and went up some more and then turned to the left and continued to climb.

By about this point I could tell that I had some blister issues going on in my right shoe on the bottom of my foot.  I think I did a pretty good job of pushing through it and by my Garmin we were right on track to meet our goal time.  We stayed strong until the end and these are my official results.

Here’s my Garmin results:

According to my Garmin the route was a little long so my official results show that our pace was a little slow, but on my Garmin based on the distance we were right on track.  Overall I am very happy with how we did on this super hilly course.

At the finish line the food was all inside the same building we got to wait in before the start of the race.  It was very organized and they even gave us a bag to put our stuff in which was very helpful.  They even had ice cream.  We were super shocked to discover that we got finisher shirts for the half too!  That sort of thing is usually reserved for full marathons.

Of course there were more pictures.

I really think that skirts made out of Mylar blankets could be big some day.  I was freezing after the race, even inside.

After Angie finished the full, we loaded up on free yogurt and hit the shuttle back to the hotel.  Nothing like free yogurt if you are willing to lug it back to the hotel with you.

One last photo on the shuttle.  These were some very tired feet.  From the top left you have Angie, Rochelle, Kelsey, Kim, Me, Patti and Angie.  I could not have picked a better group of girls to take this road trip with.