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Cowtown Marathon Time
By Blanca Gonzales
February 2012 Newsletter
Images by Blanca Gonzales
I have this love/hate relationship with the Cowtown Marathon, and guess what? I’m going back; but this time, I’m doing the Cowtown 50K (30 miles).
The Cowtown Marathon (26.2 miles) is my one and only DNF. Six years ago I started the race not feeling well at all. At mile 8 I was throwing up. Someone from an aid station saw me and that was the end of my run. They said I shouldn’t keep going if I was sick at mile 8 and I still had 18 more to go!
I PR’ed (personal record) at my other two Cowtown marathons; and you know what’s my secret? HILLS and more HILLS. I know we don’t like to run hills and complain every time we’re about to run them; but they truly are our best friends. Try to do a hilly route at least once a week and you will see a big difference in your running and racing.
We are so lucky in Arlington to have lots of hills. So you should be able to run hills more than once a week. I have this 1 mile loop where the first hill is almost 1/2 mile long, to get there I run 1.5 mile as a warm-up, do 3 or 4 loops then head back, the 1.5 mile cool-down is all up hill on the way back.
I started taking my running seriously in 2010. I added hills and speed workouts once a week. I can now say that I’m a faster runner. My pace improved by 2 minutes. Now I can do my easy runs at a 9 minute or under pace!
To think that all this started with the Cowtown marathon. I used to say, "Nope, I will never run in Fort Worth. It’s too hilly for me." Who knew, that I will earn all my PR’S in Fort Worth. I went from 4 hour 37 minutes to a 4:17 marathon, and I’m hoping to go under 4:10 next year!!
I wish good luck to all the Arlington Striders running this month at Cowtown!! Go; do your BEST and have FUN!!