30th Annual Cowtown!

This past Saturday we had a team of 8 that competed in the Fort Worth Cowtown Half Marathon!! Many of you may not know that we have been training to complete a half marathon (which is 13.1 miles).

Matt has wanted to do one for several years, but I had always said, "That's great for you, but I don't want to do 13 miles of anything!" I do not enjoy distance running, and never have! The cowtown always fell on the last weekend of February, and usually, the Big Brothers Big Sisters Walk for Kids Sake was the same weekend. Matt is on the board of directors for BBBS, so he couldn't miss the walk. The scheduling just wasn't working out.

Well, this summer I started getting Weight Watchers magazine. They had a walking challenge that would train you to walk a half marathon. Somehow walking it sounded like fun to me! Once the date was set for the BBBS walk, and we knew that it didn't conflict this year, we started training! My sister said she would train with me, but she didn't want to walk in the race. After about of month of training I talked to Matt's sister Amanda and my friend Sara Hoover. They both said they were interested in walking with me. Not much later Stephanie said that after all the training she wanted to race as well. (I use the word race very loosely!) My brother Eric decided to run it with Matt. By race day the runners were Matt, Eric, Ray and Mary (Sara's brother and his wife). Sara, Stephanie, Amanda, and I all walked and even jogged a little!

After all the months of training, we were all a little nervous! The walkers wanted to complete it in at least 3 1/2 hours and the runners wanted to come in under 2 1/2 hours. I can't remember everyone's times, but we all beat our goals by at least 15 minutes! All in all it was a great weekend! I think that this will become an annual tradition!