This race was an inaugural race and I understand that there will be a few problems that need to be sorted out, but I also ran an inaugural race in NV the month before that was first rate, so there’s that.
I won an entry to this race through a raffle at our local running store. That was a plus. The organizers did these raffles around the area. I hope they keep this.
The full marathon had a total of 25 people registered. There were over 100 registered for the half.
Packet pickup was a bit confusing and they registered me for the half by mistake, even though I emailed the race director 3 times, telling him that I was running the full.
Shirts have a nice logo, but are cotton.
I tried to drive the course the night before the race and couldn’t follow the printed map very well, I was really afraid I would get lost during the race (more on that later).
The course was brutal. There was no relief from incline after incline. I was walking up the mountains backwards just to get some pressure off my quads. The one at mile 20 or 22 (can’t remember, I have blocked it out of my memory!) was over a mile long and straight up. The roads were not all paved as the course description states, but I think they have changed the course since then, so maybe they will be.
Course spectator support is pretty much non-existent. I was out on the course alone for the majority of the 5 1/2 hours I spent out there (my slowest marathon time ever, I had just BQ’d the month before). In fact, by the time I got to the last water stop, there was no one there, but they did leave the cups and coolers there, so that was good. There was a very nice man at the top of that awful hill though with water in the back of his pickup. It was nice to see a human at that point!
I did get lost once. For the most part, there were white arrows painted on the road at the turns. I missed one and went about .25 mile out of the way, turned around and came back to find the arrow and a water stop. The person at the water stop said she saw me going the wrong way, but didn’t know if I was in the race or not!!! Uh, running outfit, bib number, looking lost…?
I ended up coming in 2nd overall Female (more confusion in the results occurred, another person got even more lost than I did!) and winning what was supposed to be $200.00 cash. I opened it later and found that it was a voucher that had to be cashed in at the local bank. I am not from Ruidoso, and it was Sunday, so I had to go to a lot of trouble to finally get the bank to send me a money order.
So, I have nothing to complain about since the race really didn’t cost me any money at all, but hopefully this review will help out those that will spend money to come run this race.
A few pluses – the views in the mountains were beautiful, the medals are a good size with the race logo on them, there was good food at the end of the race, free race photos.
If you like a lot of hills, this one will be for you!
I will not be running the full again, but may consider the half in the future.