Cow Run 10 Miler race director Chris Davenport had asked rancher Grant Harris to create an authentic experience for the runners. So Harris poured grain right in the center of the road next to his property. He whistled, and his 20 steers ambled over to the food.
In the middle of the course, less than half a mile from the start of the second annual Cow Run 10 Miler in Salem, New Jersey, the cattle staked their claim.
“I mean, this is the Cow Run,” Harris said. “Just jogging down the lane next to a fenced off pasture with steers is not the effect we were going for.”
Starting on the grounds of the Cowtown Rodeo—one of the country’s longest running and most famous—the Cow Run 10 Miler celebrates Salem’s farming and ranching heritage. So naturally, Davenport wanted the 150 participants to see some livestock along the route. He asked Harris to provide the steers.
“He told me these steers in particular were docile. I am going to choose to believe that,” Davenport said.
The race’s photographer, BJ Ayars, positioned herself near the bovines, hoping to capture runners with the animals in the background.
“I saw the steers grazing on the asphalt path and I wondered to myself if they were going to move out of the way,” Ayars said.
Initially, the steers did not. The pace bike, leading a group of runners, came upon the herd's left flank and was forced to skirt around the livestock.
As the bike and the lead runners approached, all but one of the cows shuffled to the right side of the road. The lonely animal waited for the prime moment to cut through the line of runners. Seeing an opening, the steer made a move.
“A few runners' eyes got pretty big,” Harris said. “But I was confident. These steers are pretty doggone docile. They aren’t aggressive at all.”
A runner trying to avoid the lurching animal slipped and scraped his knee on the asphalt (pictured at top). But other than that, no runners or steers were injured during the experience. Ayars was able to snap a series of memorable photos and said everyone took the incident in good spirits.
“This will be the stuff of folklore,” Davenport said.
Ayars agreed. “I am proud of this county but it’s also kind of a weird county,” she said. “Only in Salem could you have a steer enter your 10-mile race and it not faze a single person.”
While the incident was rare, Ayars said runners grilled each other about the experience at the finish line and the sentiment was the same: The race was well done.
Kit has been a health, fitness, and running journalist for the past five years. His work has taken him across the country, from Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon, to cover the 2016 Olympic Trials to the top of Mt. Katahdin in Maine to cover Scott Jurek’s record-breaking Appalachian Trail thru-hike in 2015.
