48 Hours in the Burque - Part 1

The Burque!

Thanks, New Mexico Department of Tourism's website,

for the great picture!

As all of my loyal blog readers know by now, I love to run.  Actually, scratch that.  I LIKE to run (an awful lot), but I LOVE to eat.  In order to stay a reasonable size, I balance all of the aforementioned food and drink with lots of running, and the easiest way for me to stay motivated and lace up my shoes is to sign up for a race.  When I heard that my buddy Tara won the lottery (the lottery to sign up for the race, don't get too excited) and would be running the full New York Marathon in early November, I figured she'd need to run a half marathon as part of her training plan somewhere in mid-September, and I asked if she'd let me tag along.

Said buddy Tara and I,

getting ready to run

Thankfully, she agreed, and we started looking at options.  Since Phoenix is still as hot as the 7th circle of Hell in mid-September, we looked elsewhere, and we found some fantastic options in nearby Albuquerque.  It would work out great - lovely weather, beautiful scenery, and since Tara's family lives in ABQ, we'd even have a great place to stay with some amazing hosts!  How could we lose?

Tara and her hubby Ryan drove out on Thursday night and worked from her Mom's house the next day; since Chris is almost out of vacation days, he and I caught an after-work flight on Friday, which got us in right around 8pm.  We grabbed the rental car and headed to the western side of the city, where we met Jan, Tara's Mom and her husband, Dale; after sharing some stories, we hit the hay, as Tara and I would be up really early the next morning.

Unlike many races, our chosen half marathon, the Sandia Crest Marathon and Half, was run on a Saturday; honestly, I like it when races do this, as you can spend more time recovering (read: eating and drinking fun stuff) on both Saturday and Sunday, before you have to go back to work/normal life at the beginning of the week. Anywhoo, although ABQ isn't as hot as Phoenix in general, it would still get toasty for running - 75 or so for the high - so the race kicked off early, around 6:30am.  That meant a pre-dawn wakeup for Tara and I, including parking at a local recreation center and riding a school bus to the start line.

After exiting the bus, we chilled out near the start line and visited, and Tara got to witness the excitement of me visiting the port o loo's around 800 times.  A few shots from the race photogs captured all of these important moments:

I'm in the white visor and blue jacket on the right of the shot,

and Tara is sitting on the ground next to me, in the green jacket.

We barely made it in the shot!

Again, waaaay off to the right.

Look, light!  It's slightly less early than it was!

Eventually, the sun came up and it was almost time to run!  We shed our warm clothes at the gear drop, and we waited for the one wheelchair athlete in the race to roll by us.

Thank you to Tara for both of these shots!

We are ready to run!

The race organizers kicked us off, and we started our journey down the mountain.  The race course started up in the Sandia Mountains (hence the "Crest" part of the name), and we pretty much bombed downhill for four miles before turning west and finishing the other nine on old Route 66.  While the course was advertised as a net downhill (and it clearly was), there were some decent rollers, so both the front and back of the legs got a decent workout.

Both of us grabbed some shots of the first part of the course.  From Tara:

Look at that sky!

And from my view, a bit (just a bit) further up in the pack:

The race photogs found both of us again, somewhere along this stretch:

Me!

Tara's second from the left,

in the light green shirt and black shorts.

She's obviously better at

serious runner concentration than I am.

I'm like, "Oooooooh, a camera!  Squirrel!"

Me again

Chris, Ryan, and Jan were planning to see us run by around mile 4ish, in the nearby town of Tijeras (there was ample parking on the one corner in town, as there was a Wells Fargo, a feed shop, AND a Subway - this is how we pick spectating locations), and they were right where we expected them to be.  Chris grabbed a few shots as I ran by, tossing him a now sweaty Buff, arm sleeves, and gloves.  Yum!

There's my support crew!

The ball of sweaty clothes is the black wad in my right hand.

Did I mention, yum?

Whee!

Since we didn't know what traffic would be like between this point and the finish line, we'd initially planned for this to be the only spectator spot; however, our gang was able to stop again around mile 8ish and cheer us on from the other side of the road.  I wasn't expecting to see them; hence, my less than enthusiastic response in these photos:

I love that I'm looking straight down in this photo,

like, "I was told this race was downhill.

This is clearly a 'going up'-type hill."

"Oh, um, hi guys!"

Even with the uphills, I was right where I expected to be on my pace, and I ended up crossing the finish line in just over two hours (2:01:48); this isn't my fastest time by far, but I was happy with it.  Since the crowd was small (the race has just under 600 finishers between both distances), it was easy to find our folks, and Chris was able to get some decent shots of me coming across the line.

Here I come!

See?  I have the entire finishers' chute to myself.

That NEVER happens.

The secure area had all sorts of good treats, including some seriously amazing doughnuts (like, really, really good) and the Otter Pops I was told would be on mile 10 on the course (I looked for those dudes, since they were advertised in the race information, but I could not find them where they were mentioned - Tara said the same).

This is some seriously loving food photography.

I feel like the race photog and I could be friends.

While I was working with a whole cadre of volunteers to find my official race shirt, Tara came across the finish line, also looking strong and doing much better than her projections; she'd had a significant concern with one of her toes just a few weeks before this race, so we weren't 100% sure she might finish.  She put all of those doubts to rest and did amazing!  We celebrated by hopping up on the podium area and having our paparazzi take an alarming number of pictures of us (like for reals, we have 14 pictures from three phones of this moment):

We collected our gear bags, changed into dry clothes, then hopped in the vehicles to head to an overdue celebratory breakfast at the Frontier, an institution right across the street from the University of New Mexico.  Dale also joined us, and we commandeered a few tables, across which we spread a wealth of delicious food, most of it covered in various preparations of green chile.

Hooray for breakfast!

A close up of my amazing huevos rancheros - 

one egg with red and one egg with green - 

I got to ask the guy for Christmas!

Those beans were also off the chain delicious.

Happy and full of green chile!

Overall, the Sandia Crest Half Marathon was a great event, and if we get the chance, I'd love to come back and do it again in the future.  The course was awesome - well marked and accurate; the scenery was pretty, if a bit industrial once we started into town; and the staff and volunteers were some of the nicest I've ever come across.  It sounds odd, but we just couldn't stop telling people how NICE everyone was.  As an out-of-town participant who couldn't make packet pickup, the folks I emailed back and forth with were outstanding; they were prompt to respond to questions and concerns, and they were more than willing to help me with whatever I needed.  Highly recommend!

On a future blog, we all go back to the house and take showers!  Then we drink beer!  And hang out with family and friends!  And eat more green chile!

Later!

Amy