I Ran for Peanut Butter Pancakes

The Cowtown Marathon had a free Pancake Social Run this morning.  It was 3 different route options, all on the back half of The Cowtown Marathon course: 7 miles, 12 miles or 15 miles.  When Hilda told me about it, I didn't hesitate to say let's do it!  I'm scheduled to run 14 miles today anyway and figured it would a great way to get to know the course better and run a different route.  I'm getting bored running same route on Trinity Trails anyway.  It started at 7:00 and there were over 300 people there.  Once we got there, we got the copy of the map and directions of the course.  Hilda and her friend did less than me as Hilda is recovering from knee surgery.

We took a quick picture, grabbed the 15 mile course and went outside to see if I could figure it out on my own.  A girl came up to me and asked me what mileage I was doing and told her 15.  She said me too and asked what pace am I.  I just told her, I wasn't going to worry about that because it's going to be hard to maintain pace and read directions at the same time.  She told me she was 8-8:15 pace and I told her me too!  So, we decided to run together.  I was glad because my sense of directions isn't that great and figured we both could figure it  out.  I found out Lauren (that's her name) is a teacher in FWISD.  That's cool that we're both in education and usually I'm not a talker when I run, but since we weren't worried about time, we talked the whole time.  We ran into a guy, Tristan who seemed lost and tagged along with us.  Cowtown will be his first time to run a half marathon and Lauren's first time to run a full marathon. We talked about training, college, races, etc.  We all managed to maintain a 8:05-8:15 pace for the first half, but we got a little turned around a couple of times so, the second half was much slower.  It was a pretty route and hilly too.  Ran through a new park off Park Ave. in a nice neighborhood.  I plan on going back to run it for it has a good trail I've never seen before.  Tristan decided to run with another guy who was doing only 12 miles because he said that's all he was scheduled to do anyway.  Lauren and I finished the last two miles getting turned around once again, but figured it out and finished back at the office.  It was a huge loop around Forest Hill/University/Park Ave and part of Trinity Trails.  I know now that I need to continue with hill work for it's going to be a hilly course!  Our finish time was 2:00:38 at a 8:37 pace.  Finished off eating peanut butter pancakes...yummy!  Fun times with new friends!