Cowtown Recap

It's been a while, but I am back. Here is a much much much delayed race recap. So, as expressed before, I am fairly new to this running thing. I have spent the last year building up some meager skills in the running arena. Being the competitive idiot I am, I want to race. Mostly it is to beat my own times in an official setting, but deep down, I like to see where I stand against others. I ran 2 races last year, learned a lot, did ok for what I expected, and kept on training. So as 2013 started, I wanted to see what my training had wrought. Enter The Cowtown.

 

Papa-squatch offered to fly me down for a runcation. Hang out, do a little running, general merriment. I was excited. Took a couple days off of work, got entered in the 10k. I was pumped. Being a creature of nature I should have known that Mother Nature was not amused with my general excitedness and decided that she had had enough of them shenanigans. To bring me down a peg or two she pummeled us with a double-barrel shotgun blast of blizzicane. I was supposed to fly out late Thursday evening. It was a chance to spend a whole day with the family before fleeing for warmer temps. Well. Instead I got to shovel snow, a lot of snow. For the first time in memory they shut down the damn airport. Flight delayed. So I rescheduled for the next morning, nope. Not happening. Friday afternoon it was then. Got up ungodly early, took off on my trek to the airport. Kudos to the Kansas and Missouri road crews for making things passable. Lo and behold I got to the airport in one piece, met a few people that were going down and were in the same boat I was…stand-by. Sadly, I wasn’t a chosen one so I had to wait til my afternoon flight a few hours and $30 dollar airport lunch later. Finally, FINALLY I made it to Ft. Worth.

 

Well that was fun. But I was here for a reason and that reason was to run a race. So, we went to the expo and got our packets and wandered around. I had never been to a race with an expo so it was new to me. Got some gear cheap, some free Chobani , some other freebies and went to eat a dinner and get some sleep.  I woke up the next morning early, got fueled up and was ready to go. I didn’t forget anything, got my bib and chip put on, I was ready to go.

 

It was a great morning out. Sunny, not terribly cold, but not terribly hot either. A great morning for a race and I was ready. The race area was a cool part of Ft. Worth which made for a good route and cool start/finish corral. I got warmed up, pumped up, and lined up. I wasn’t too far behind the big boys who were running for a win, I was just trying to not suck and not die. Looking around, I had never ran a race with this many people.  4108 10k finishers to be exact. This was going to be fun. It was time. Ready, set, GO.  And we were off.

 

One thing I noticed getting into the starting corral was a lot of kids and coaches, which meant track teams. From the looks of it, anywhere from maybe late grade school to high school and maybe even small college teams. Mix that in with the normal group of runners, walkers, really fast, really slow, there was a wide variety. This would come into play later on. In the mean time, I was cruising along, dodging kids, generally sticking to my own pace. Things were going generally well, I was making very good time. Then around mile 4.5ish or so, it happened. I got chicked.

 

Now this in itself isn’t that big of a deal. There are tons and tons of females far faster than I am and I am ok with that. But this particular one was all but maybe 11 years old and I am fairly certain taking the speed powerup (pretty sure that is a banned substance) you get in a video game cause she flew right by me. Well, I may be a humble guy, but I still have some ego and pride. I was stung. I picked it up a bit, too late mind you. Well, lo and behold about a mile and a half later this young girl was struggling mightily getting up one of the larger hills at the end of the course. Yes, that's right, I was excited to pass an 11 year old girl. My shame knows no ends. Anyways. Moving on. So I left the girl and my shame in the dust and kicked hard and crossed the line, 44:17. My old PR was in the trashcan much the same as my breakfast was threatening to become. Once I regained composure (not barfy) I found my family and went through the breakfast line. Yeah. Nothing says you almost chunked after your race like fruit and yogurt. It was good.  All in all I was thoroughly pleased with the race and my little part in it. Well done Cowtown. Cannot wait to see ya again.

 

But that isn’t the end of the story. This was supposed to be a runcation. Well. After running around Ft. Worth all day after the race, I got a call from home with a rather frantic warning of snowpocalypse v.2 currently aiming towards my future destination.  So after some lengthy phone calls with the airline I got my flight bumped and came home early to avoid the deluge. And just as one last little nugget of awesome to remember my trip by, this happened. God bless Texas.