Race Day, Pace Day! Cowtown Ultra 50k Recap.

Hey there! I thought I would do a quick RECAP from one of my favorite races!! The Cowtown ULTRAmarathon! This is the 3rd year in a row that I’ve been an official pacer for this race. See the last two here and here. And honestly I love it SO much that I want to forever be a pacer for this race. Being a pacer is a job I take uber serious and I am oh so passionate about! It is all about helping people reach their goals and having fun while doing it! So allow me to share my experience with you.

For this race, I didn’t do a full taper mostly because I am keeping my mileage up in preparation for the Hachie 50 miler, which is in May. So this race was more or less for training, to get some strong miles in and enjoy pacing all at the same time. I have been happy with the way my training has gone lately. The legs are feeling back to their full strength post Brazos Bend 100 miler and I am ready to get some faster running in. So, when the opportunity presented itself to pace the 5 hour ultra, I definitely was excited and jumped at the offer. Some of you know that I paced the 5:30 ultra last year and had an absolute blast. So this was a great role to be in…I was actually the LEADER of the ultra pack as you can see here from the Cowtown website. That was definitely something to be proud of.

I got my things ready the night before, went over my pacing strategy and was good to go. Those pacer bands definitely come in handy.

My pace buddy and I linked up on Sunday morning bright and early! Amy is an accomplished ultrarunner as well. So it was cool to share battle stories with her. We had a couple of peeps that stayed with us along for the ride and since Amy is a local running coach/celebrity she knew EVERYONE on the course. It was quite funny to see but I loved it because we felt a little like celebrity pacers. Local celebs, of course.

7 a.m. rolled around and we were ready to get going! We took off into the beautiful sunrise and I felt super good that morning. Honestly the weather was IDEAL for a P.R.!! We went off into the rolling hills that Cowtown is known for. I’ve done this race so many times that I know the route like the back of my hand. So I knew where to expect each climb and utilized this in my pacing strategy. We banked a little time to use in the back half of this race, especially where the marathoners turn off and finish their race. Their turn is where we continue going and finish up the ultra, which is a little tough to see people finishing and you have to keep going. Also the last 5 miles is in the straight up SUN with no shade. And the sun was certainly shining that day. But we had a nice cool breeze that kept us feeling good. We hit the turn around and Amy and I grabbed a snack at the aid station and made our way back. And YES…they had a beer out there for me. And I had a sip. It was a nice carb boost that I needed…at mile 27. HA

Overall this race was absolutely fantastic and we finished in perfect time, just under 5 hours which was awesome. I took on this pacing gig with the intent to help others but also to help myself – the pace coordinator had a ton of faith in me and let me go ahead and lead the pack for this one. This actually ended up being a 50K P.R. for me! My previous 50k time was 5:12 so I was ecstatic to beat my previous time. So race day PACE day was a huge success on all fronts.

And of course we had a photoshoot and more celebrating and all was well in the world. Go team.

Can’t wait to do it all again next year.

How was your weekend?! Did anyone run COWTOWN (half, marathon, ULTRA?!) You are all rockstars to me! Congrats to all who raced.