Windy Cowtown

We went to Ft Worth for The 2009 Cowtown Marathon this weekend. My brother was running his first marathon and I wanted to be there to be supportive. I had planned to run with him from time to time throughout the day and was able to do that as planned.

I had laid out a logistic plan with turn by turn directions for my wife and daughter so they could drop me off at one spot and pick me up at another and then we would shuttle ahead a couple of miles to await his arrival. This worked really well except for once and it is how we went around the course.

The start was at 7:30am which sounded great...temps supposed to be in the upper thirties....well, they were in the lower thirties and the wind was HOWLING...blowing about 15-20 with some gusts over 30....it was pretty well brutal. It was supposed to climb to the 50s in temperature but I don't think it ever got there - if it did, it was overshadowed by the wind. At one point, we almost stopped - okay, we weren't running that fast but still - we almost stopped.

His nutrition plan worked very well, he was slightly dehydrated about mile 22 or 23 but he took some more water and really didn't seem to suffer any. The last mile or so into downtown was downwind so that was really nice. I had been cold all day and it seemed warmer running with the wind.

A great finish line for him. A wonderful achievement. His first half in November and a full mary in February. Congratulations to him.

It was a surprise, he didn't know we were coming. We decided to catch him about mile 3 and I was planning to run about a mile and a half with him that time (more on that in a minute). So we are standing out in the cold wind watching these folks run by with my wife and daughter wearing out a cowbell and yelling their guts out. They were having fun....so then we see Bruce approaching and I started to cross out into the field (it was a relatively small marathon crowd wise) to join up with him for a while....so he tells me he was running along thinking wow, that is really cool that someone got up early on a cold Saturday to come out here and ring a cowbell and yell for people and ooooh, the neighbors may not like how loud that cowbell is this early and look at that, that guy is going to get in big trouble running out of the crowd like that....hey he looks like my brother, holy crap, that is my brother - so when he got over that shock, then he realized that was his sister in law and niece ringing that silly bell - needless to say, he was very surprised.

So I ran with him about thirteen and a half miles around mile 3, 8, 12, 17, and 21 to the finish...each run from one to two and half miles up to 22 and then I ran with him the rest of the way peeling off right before the finishing chute.

It was a great day even with the wind. I had a nice run too.