I ran this race with my friend who was running her very first marathon. It has become a tradition for my two wonderful friends and me to take a girls’ trip to celebrate two of our birthdays in September; mine and Karen’s. What better way is there to celebrate than with a lovely runner girl trip?! This trip was a truly special one, because 1. I turned 50 on 9/10 and 2. Karen was running her very first marathon! I do need to take a pause here and thank all three of our wonderfully supportive husbands who encourage us to enjoy these experiences with each other. They all doggy sit and hold down the forts while we are off having fun.

Sharla, Karen and I run together often. On our last two runner girl trips, Sharla and I ran the full marathon while Karen opted for the half. Well, I think we finally convinced her that running a full marathon would be a great idea! The first thing we had to do was find a good one that fit into everyone’s schedule.

I saw a new race pop up on my Facebook feed one day and given that all three of us love downhill races and this one was in Albequerque (drivable from Lubbock), we decided it would be the perfect first full for Karen! So, we all registered for the Sandia Crest MARATHON! I found a discount code on the FB page and saved a little on my registration. We booked an AirBnB and were all set. Karen trained hard in the hot summer days and used the same training plan I used for my first full. It was one in the back of Marathoning for Mortals by John Bingham.

Race weekend arrived and we were on our adventure! We drove to ABQ Thursday night and checked in to our AirBnB. It was fantastic! Three bedrooms, two baths and a huge amount of space in a hip neighborhood called Nob Hill. The house was full of really interesting artwork too. We hit the jackpot.

Starving, we decided to carb load immediately and found a great Italian restaurant called M’Tucci’s. My birthday was the week before, but we didn’t get to go out to celebrate, so we did a little celebrating at this dinner. The Italian Twinkie was to die for!

Friday morning, we drove the course and enjoyed the lovely views on Sandia mountain. It was going to be a beautiful race!

We then drove to packet pick up after that. There was no expo, just a packet pick up at a local running store. We took a moment to buy some last minute fuel and snapped a few pics. We also got to meet Troy, the race director. I had my Revel Big Cottonwood shirt on and thought he might be irritated seeing that, but as it turned out, he was inspired by his experience at the Revel Mt. Charleston Marathon and that’s what prompted him to organize this inaugural race.

There were a few striking similarities between this race and the Revel races. The first and most obvious was that this was a downhill course (5000 ft. descent). The next was getting a nice hat along with our race shirt. I loved the hat, but the cotton shirt was a little plain and had Sandia Crest Marathon in small lettering on the back. If you weren’t looking for it, you would miss it. The race packet had a few fliers and coupons in it and in another similarity to Revel it included a pair of throwaway gloves and a mylar blanket.

We took a trip to Whole Foods and picked up a few things, laid out our race attire, and turned in early.

My 3:45 a.m. alarm interrupted a good night’s sleep. Our place was about 15 minutes from where the buses were being loaded, so we had a bit more time getting ready. Bus loading was from 4:00-5:30 a.m. We pulled into the parking lot of the Manzano Mesa Community Center and there were quite a few school buses ready to be taken over by a bunch of anxious runners. We all hit the port-a-pots and loaded the bus. Our bus driver got a little lost on the way to the mountain, but luckily someone on the bus was from the area and set her straight before we got too far down the road.

At the start, there were several port-a-pots and lots of energetic music playing. We were able to keep our gear bags with us until about 15 minutes before the start. The sunrise was beautiful and we found plenty of very nice people who were willing to snap pics for us. Runners are such friendly people!

We lined up at the starting line, there was a 10 second countdown and we were off. No National Anthem was sung and I said this as we started, so a very kind gentleman who was running in front of us started singing The Star Spangled Banner. It made us all laugh.

The course was a nice steep downhill slope at the beginning so we were flying and hit some pretty good paces. The sun was rising, and we could see the beautiful trees and distant landscape. It was stunning!

Because of a mixup, there were too many port-a-pots ordered, so fortunately for the runners, there were some at EVERY MILE! That was awesome!

We hit the halfway point and gone were the trees, gone was the downhill and gone was our momentum. But, we persevered and ticked off mile after mile until we finally reached the finish line! The three of us grabbed hands and crossed together! (I don’t have a picture of this, because the photographer stopped taking photos at 11:45. Bummer!)

The finish line fare consisted of donuts, chocolate milk and protein bars. I splurged and had a donut! It was delicious.

We drove back to our AirBnB, cleaned up, then headed out for some post race pizza! The best thing to do was to keep moving, so we walked down the street to Il Vicino and had some amazing pizza. Then we walked a little further down the street to Frost and had some tasty gelato for dessert. The presentation in the gelato cases was just beautiful.

We took it easy for the rest of the evening and made some delicious banana pancakes for dinner.

The next morning, we slept in and packed up our things. And just like that, our time in Albuquerque came to an end and we drove home.

But, one of us was returning home a changed woman. Karen was now a MARATHONER!

My thoughts…

I enjoyed the Sandia Crest inaugural marathon. I may run it again sometime. I’m working on the 50 states, and I already have two races in New Mexico, but we’ll see what happens next year.

Here’s a breakdown of the race:

Course: Beautiful and pretty much downhill for the first 11 miles, then there is no shade at all and a lot more hills as you run on historic Route 66. Perhaps they could shift the course to the other side of the road, there seemed to be more shade there.

Crowd Support: Not a lot of spectators were along the course, but the people at the aid stations were very cheerful and supportive.

Aid Stations: Lots of porta-Johns along the course, but aid stations were about 2.5 miles apart and really needed to be every mile at least for the last 6 miles (they are changing this for next year). Each station had Tailwind and water. Mile 22 had otter pops!

Race Photos: Free race pics, however the photographer must have quit before noon, because there were no finisher photos after 11:45.

Starting Area: Plenty of porta-Johns and lots of pumped up music plus a beautiful sunrise. No national anthem to start. School buses were used to transport us up the mountain. If you paid for the VIP experience, you got to ride in a coach bus and leave a little later than the regular group.

Finish Area: Plenty of donuts, Probars and chocolate milk were available at the finish. There were several pools of ice water to soak your feet! There were also areas to take pictures and places to sit down. One kind of annoying thing was a man with a laptop computer ran over and shoved the screen in our faces as we were getting our medals. I appreciate that he wanted to give us our finishing time right away, but it just felt pushy and he got in the way of picture taking and celebrating.

Race organization: Troy did a great job. Email communication before the race was good, results were up fast, packet pickup was smooth. Sure, there need to be a few tweaks for next year, but I’d say this race was all in all a successful one.

This was my second time running this race and I have written a race recap on my blog at:
https://debrunsto50.wordpress.com/2018/05/08/april-race-summary-and-revel-mt-charleston-marathon-recap-sometimes-its-not-about-me/

To summarize, the weather did not cooperate this year and we did not hit our desired time, but had a wonderful time anyway. I love Revel’s medals and everything about their races!

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.

This race was one of my early attempts at a BQ in 2016. It was a quick weekend trip, so I didn’t have a lot of time for sight seeing. I flew into San Francisco and drove on in to Napa on a Friday, went to the expo and explored a little of the town on Saturday and ran the race Sunday.

The Expo
This was a very small expo held at the host hotel. There was wine tasting (although I didn’t want to drink the day before my race, a few booths and displays. The swag was good. We got a wonderful duffel bag and shirt as well as some goodies.

The Race
We were bused up to Calistoga early in the morning and waited about 45 minutes to start. The view was beautiful as the sun was rising above the mountains. Corrals were nonexistent as we just lined up wherever to start. The weather was cool and called for rain.
This is a net downhill course and headphones were banned. I read in the race info that if you were caught wearing them, you would be disqualified, so I did a lot of my training without headphones. I’m glad I did, because it really made me not have to depend on them as much. The course was beautiful. Not a whole lot of spectators until later miles. There is a BIG incline at mile 16 that I wasn’t expecting, so that kind of sucked. It began to sprinkle a bit around mile 18 or 20, but stopped quickly. The finish was at a high school, hence no wine at the finish. Boo! I was only 30 seconds off from a BQ and was happy with it. (Ended up with a BQ at my next race).
Medal was nice. For some reason there was a typewriter theme that was on the shirt and medal. I probably would have preferred a wine theme.
No free race pics.
Nice race and a great perk was the bag full of products that Whole Foods gave is if we visited the store.
Probably won’t do it again, but it is a good bucket list race.

The New Year’s Double was a tradition for me three years in a row until I got food poisoning at a local restaurant and ran 4 races in two days sick as a dog. But, the race itself is wonderful!

Events: 5k, half marathon and marathon on NY Eve and on NY Day. You can run a combination of any or if you’re really feeling ambitious, you can run 2 5ks and 2 marathons in two days. I did this in 2015-2016.

Expo: There is a packet pickup only in the middle of the park where the races are held.

Lodging: lots of hotels close by.

Shirts: Technical Long Sleeve and Short sleeve (one for each day). Design is based on the theme of the medal that year. I especially liked 2015 with the tattoo designs on them.

Medals: Beautiful finisher medal for each event. If you do a combination of events you get a challenge plate. All the medals will fit onto that plate. My only negative is that the half marathon and marathon get the exact same medal and challenge plate.

Age Group Awards: Pretty champagne flutes with race logo. You must pick up your award during the event. They will not mail them to you.

Course: 4 loops on a mostly concrete path through Celebration Park. Some beautiful trees in the middle, but basically not a lot of scenery.

Time limits: I believe they have very generous time limits. Lots of Marathon Maniacs and Half Fanatics and walkers.

Free Race Pics

Nice Finisher Certificates

Organization: This race series runs like a well oiled machine. Kudos to Libby, the RD!