Thousands compete in the 45th annual Cowtown Marathon
More than 21,000 participated in the 45th annual Cowtown Marathon in Fort Worth on Sunday.
Marathon announcer and Cowtown board member Brian Hocker was the first to speak giving runners a 30-minute, 15-minute and 5-minute warning prior to the first race of the day.
The marathon was then introduced by former Fort Worth Mayor Betsy Price who was participating in her 32nd Cowtown Marathon.
There were two notable firsts in the history of the marathon.
The first was a wheelchair participant in the half-marathon, marathon and ultra-marathon.
One of the wheelchair runners was Keegan Harrison ,who was the youngest and smallest person ever to receive a heart transplant in Texas.
The other first was hosting the 2023 USATF half marathon championships.
The men’s and women’s champions both set the course record for the half marathon. They also had the distinction of being the Cowtown Marathon’s first finishers of the day.
Jacob Thompson won his first USATF championship after falling just short in previous years and was happy to spend time in Fort Worth.
“I love all the races on the U.S. road circuit, I haven’t spent much time in Fort Worth as much as I fly out of Dallas-Fort Worth airport. It was good to hang out here for a couple of days.”
Aliphine Tuliamuk won the women’s event. Despite the difficulty of the course, she said she had fun.
“I think running through Cowtown was pretty special, It felt like I was running through a town in the movies,” she said.
Following the USATF participants, the rest of the runners came up in eight corrals and hit the course on a staggered start.
The event had a joyful energy with spectators voraciously waving signs and their arms to cheer on friends and family competing. The runners fed off that energy with several course records being set.
The event brought some first-time runners out, many of whom plan to come run the Cowtown Marathon again.
One such first-time runner was the regular men’s half-marathon winner Nassim Kabbara who was excited to win in his first-ever half-marathon race and his first-ever Cowtown Marathon.
“I’ve never run a half-marathon before, but this was my debut. Didn’t know how it was gonna feel but I had a lot of support from all the spectators.”
Parker Spradley and Darrian Johnson were two more first-time participants who had a great time running the marathon and planned on making it a yearly tradition.
“I felt good it makes it easier to be surrounded by other people and it gives you motivation to finish the whole thing,” Spradley said.
“It was also really nice to see the whole entire city come out, neighbors, students, people from different establishments just cheering you that was just a really nice part of the atmosphere,” Johnson said.
The event organizers knew they were taking on a challenge by adding the USATF championship alongside their normal programming but knew they could handle the challenge.
“We were absolutely thrilled that USTAF chose to hold their race here in Fort Worth it did add a little bit of organizational chaos but all for the best, “ said Cowtown Marathon board member Leslie Casey, “This race we’ve been doing it for 45 years so we know how to run a safe organized race so it was really exciting.”
The top male and female finishers from the rest of the races over the two-day marathon.
Adult 5K race: Jessica Smith,19:02*; Terry Williams,16:24*
Adult 10k race: Luciana Bartholomew, 37:51*; Austin Del Rosso, 32:49*
USATF half marathon: Jacob Thomson, 1:02:38*; Aliphine Tuliamuk, 1:09:37*
Half marathon: Nassim Kabbara, 1:10:21; Damaris Areba, 1:16:24*
Full marathon: Joseph Darda, 2:32:16; Dora Eastin, 2:52:24*
Ultra marathon: Bryan Morseman, 3:01:45; Jessalyn Sadler, 3:50:00
*Course record
This story was originally published February 26, 2023 at 12:05 PM.