The idea for El Scorcho started last fall/winter when I checked out the Ultracentric 24-hour road race in Grapevine. Watching folks running a looped course that November night (and knowing that they would still be running into the wee hours of the morning), gave me the idea.

Why couldn't we put on something like this? At the time, I'd run several marathons and had just broken the 4-hour barrier, but I'd never done anything beyond 26.2 miles.

So I called up Smiley and told him my idea. A 50K race in Fort Worth at night in the middle of the summer. He was into it, but neither of us had ever organized a race.

So we called up Coach Jim at Fort Worth Running Company. After Jim realized we weren't completely crazy (or that we were the right kind of crazy), he warmed up to the idea. He helped us plan out the course (a 3.1 mile loop, as opposed to a 10 mile course), and we started the process of locating a charitable beneficiary and obtaining approval from the city to use Trinity Park after hours.