Free. You can start with nothing.
The full Cowboy 200: a point-to-point start in Norfolk at 6:00 AM Friday and a finish at Bolo Beer Co. in Valentine, with zero repetition. Eleven full aid stations and eight unmanned water stations along the way, and three sleep stations at Atkinson, Long Pine and Wood Lake.
The Cowboy Trail is an old rail trail, non-technical and, in the race's words, extraordinarily flat, run on crushed limestone with short paved sections through towns. Several reroutes leave the trail for backroads (paved, dirt and minimum-maintenance road) around bridges damaged by flooding, between Oakdale and Clearwater. The longest stretch between full aid stations is Neligh to Ewing. After Wood Lake there is no full aid station until the finish.
A point-to-point 200-mile footrace on the Cowboy Trail, a converted rail line across northern Nebraska, run on crushed limestone from Norfolk west to Valentine with no repeated ground. The trail crosses more than 200 former railway bridges, including one a quarter-mile long and over 148 feet high, and passes through small towns that still hold depots and other relics of the old railroad. It also offers a 100-mile option that starts a day later and partway along the same trail, in Atkinson.
The race was first run in November 2022. Editions since 2023 have run in September.
| Mile | Station | Cutoff | Crew access | Bag | Pacer | Med | To next |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0.00 | Ta-Ha-Zouka Park (Start) | ? | ● | ○ | ○ | ? | 10.00 |
| 10.00 | Battle Creek | ? | ● | ○ | ○ | ? | 7.10 |
| 17.10 | Meadow Grove | ? | ○ | ○ | ○ | ? | 5.40 |
| 22.50 | Tilden | 2:00pm | ● | ● | ○ | ? | 7.30 |
| 29.80 | Oakdale | ? | ○ | ○ | ○ | ? | 8.60 |
| 38.40 | Neligh | 8:00pm | ● | ● | ○ | ? | 16.00 |
| 54.40 | Clearwater | ? | ○ | ○ | ○ | ? | 10.00 |
| 64.40 | Ewing | 5:00am | ● | ● | ● | ? | 13.20 |
| 77.60 | Inman | ? | ○ | ○ | ○ | ? | 7.90 |
| 85.50 | O'Neill | 1:30pm | ● | ● | ● | ? | 8.20 |
| 93.70 | Emmett | ? | ○ | ○ | ○ | ? | 10.30 |
| 104.00 | Atkinson | 2:00am | ● | ● | ● | ? | 10.00 |
| 114.00 | Stuart | 7:00am | ● | ● | ● | ? | 9.80 |
| 123.80 | Newport | ? | ○ | ○ | ○ | ? | 11.10 |
| 134.90 | Bassett | 4:30pm | ● | ● | ● | ? | 9.50 |
| 144.40 | Long Pine | 10:00pm | ● | ● | ● | ? | 7.80 |
| 152.20 | Ainsworth | 2:00am | ● | ● | ● | ? | 11.80 |
| 164.00 | Johnstown | ? | ○ | ○ | ○ | ? | 10.60 |
| 174.60 | Wood Lake | 11:00am | ● | ● | ● | ? | 9.80 |
| 184.40 | Arabia | ? | ○ | ○ | ○ | ? | 15.60 |
| 200.00 | Bolo Beer Co. (Finish) | 6:00pm | ● | ? | ● | ? | ? |
Parking. Crew must park in the large lot north of the Neligh Mill.
Parking. Crew must park along Clark Street and walk to the aid station.
Parking. Crew must stay outside the bunkhouse. Park legally along Main Street and walk to the aid station. No parking on the grass beside the bunkhouse.
Parking. Crew may not arrive until their runner is within 5 miles of the aid station according to live tracking.
8 people have been out there with a camera or a microphone.
These are other people's work and we link straight to them. Watching costs nothing and needs no account. More of them: every race we hold, on film.
Nobody sees it until we have read it. No account, no sign-in.
This changes nothing on the page on its own. Somebody checks it against the race first.
Somebody watches it before it goes anywhere near this page. What we are after is footage of this course, on the ground. If it would be just as true of any other race, it is not this.
We want the address of the file the race publishes, not the file. We download it from there so the page can say where the line came from.
We read every one of these and we write back. Every fact here carries the source it came from, and the way a wrong one gets fixed is a person checking it against what you tell us.
Cutoffs move, races get postponed, lotteries open and close. We read the race's own sources and record where every fact came from. Put your email in and we will send you what changed, and where we read it.
No account, and nothing to cancel.
What happens to your email. Nothing else. I do not sell it, and I will not send you anything except this race changing. One click gets you out.
I keep this catalog because the information is scattered and hard to trust. Telling you when it moves is the same job.
