2019 COW PADDY RUN | NORTHWEST ARKANSAS EVENT PHOTOGRAPHER

It's a very rainy day here in Fayetteville, which made me think back to another very rainy day in April.

Since 2010 or so, I've been a sponsor of the Cow Paddy Run. A 5K and 1K fun run family event, the race originated sometime in the late 80s or 90s, when I was a little kid, to help fund the creation of Gulley Park in Fayetteville, Arkansas. It went away, eventually, but was resurrected by some of my friends in 2010 as a charity event to give back to our area's public schools. Now under the umbrella of and raising money for The Spark Foundation, the Cow Paddy Run has been growing and growing for the past nine years, and has become well-known in the community, especially among elementary schoolchildren. The Spark Foundation has a grant program through the Fayetteville Public Education Foundation, and they are huge promoters of health and fitness through an active lifestyle for children and families.

This year was a record setter. Not for finishing times, not for number of bananas consumed, but for one thing: dreariness. It was a cold, wet, miserable day. Very cold. Very wet. Very miserable.

But, as usual, the show must go on, and so I braved the rain and got what shots I could to tell the story of the day. Here are some of them.