Went down to Fort Worth early this morning for my yearly pilgrimage to where this whole mess started in 2013 with my first marathon alongside Josh Kitchens and also where I first met Brant and ran the first of many miles over the years with him. Josh and I met earlier in 2012 at a Forever and Everest show at The Abbey Underground after running at the Oak Street Social Run for a couple of months without meeting. I’d been going through a transition of sorts through friend groups and was still in the process of finding my way through. I had just run my first real race, a 5K, a few months earlier and when Josh mentioned he was training for the Dallas Marathon, it sounded good to me.

We started training but because of the 2012 Icepocalypse, Dallas was cancelled and we weren’t sure what else we could do. Josh was out of contact for most of that day and didn’t have the funds at the time to sign up for another race. His friends raised the money in a couple of hours so he could do Cowtown in a couple of months and while we weren’t nearly as well trained for Cowtown, again due to weather, we finished and I promptly cramped so badly that I had to go to medical to get rolled out before I was ready to hobble home. I did end up running Dallas in 2013 but was battling piraformis pain and didn’t really enjoy it. Cowtown yes, Dallas no.

So every year since, I’ve made my way down to Cowtown for what has become one of two road races that I run. Last year, I ran with Heather for most of the half and we did the same thing this year. We were pushing the pace a bit, kept things around 10:00/mile pretty consistently. My hip flexors and IT band were not terribly happy with the sustained effort on the road and I’ll have to do some body work this week so I’m ready for Tinajas 50K on Saturday.

Days like today remind me about how important community can be when things are looking bleak. I had a couple of really low days this week for one reason or another, I didn’t run much at all, but today’s race was enough to pull me out of the funk for long enough to appreciate what I’ve got.

Also, next year I want to go sub-2:00.00.

Onwards and Upwards!