This was my fourth time to run the Cowtown but my first time doing the full marathon. As a repeat runner, I know very well how good the organization runs their race. The expo is appropriate for the size of the race, there are plenty of interesting vendors and plenty of merchandise available for purchase. There were some issues this year with the Saturday races being delayed due to some strong storms that hit the area that morning. As a result, there was quite a crowd around the expo area that were still participating in the 5K and 10K Saturday races and parking was more limited than it typically would be. Not a fault of the organizers, they showed an amazing ability to roll with the challenges and still put on a successful expo.
Race day started nice and cool with temperatures in the low 40s. Anyone who has run Cowtown knows that they are maybe the best at moving runners through their corrals and onto the course. I started in corral 5 with some friends and we were on the course and running within 20 minutes of the starting gun. The start was not congested and there were plenty of cheering spectators to get us into the mood to run.
The course is a lot of fun, with lots of changes in scenery along the way. The course starts out moving through downtown into the Stockyards area where there are lots of potentially hungover tourists surprised to see a marathon breaking out in front of their hotels. Coming out of the Stockyards means hitting the hill at mile 9 that you can see coming from mile 7. It's not near as bad as it looks once you get there and the band playing "Shake it Off" at the top took a little of the edge off the effort I expended.
As with most events, the full split from the half meant things got a lot lonelier after mile 10 when I left the big crowd of half runners. This is where the people of Ft. Worth really showed that they love this event. In spite of there being a fraction of runners continuing into the full, their was a steady showing of neighbors with fruit and candy all along the course. At mile 20 there was a huge block party with tons of people out and about, giving out food and various fluids.
The last 3 miles were on a park path and that was the quietest section of the course. By this time, the sun had been out for awhile and it was getting a lot warmer than the start. In spite of the heat, I managed to keep a good pace and stayed with the 4:40 pace from mile 23 to finish. I finished with the pacer and had an official time of 4:40:01 so she was right on it! My time represented an 8 minute PR so this was a great run for me.
The finish area was well done and there was very little wait to getting a finisher shirt, fruit, and disposal finisher's jacket. This was the least amount of walking I've had to do in a finishers area and they had plenty of shuttle buses to get me back to my hotel. I can't recommend Cowtown enough, it's a great race with fun spectators and a management team that knows what they are doing.