Running in circles

There is something about running in a loop that has always appealed to me.  It could be not having to see the same thing twice on a run.  Maybe it's because you never have that feeling of just trying to get to the halfway point so you can turn around and be heading back home.  Or perhaps you can just cover the most varied amount of terrain that way.  Whatever the reason, I have spent countless hours pouring over maps and guidebooks trying to find new places to run where I can connect trails together to create some form of a circular path.  And so this is how I found myself last Saturday trudging through 3 feet of snow on a northerly slope at 8500 ft, on a run that was supposed to be a nice dry trail run in 60 degree sunny weather.

Rewind a few hours and I am at my friend Bekah's kitchen table Saturday morning looking at a very basic trail map of the trail system in the foothills of the Sandia Mountains East of Albuquerque .  I was taking advantage of a trip to visit my wife's friend at her new place and scheming to get in a 17+ mile training run entirely on dry trails.  Living in the San Juans of Southern Colorado, you have to take advantage of any chance to get on a dry trail in the winter.  From thanksgiving on, it is usually 4 to 5 months of running on packed snow, pavement, and treadmills.

There were easily 75 miles of trails in the foothills system, and a trail head was 2 blocks from the front door.  With nearly all of the trails running along the base of the mountains at around 5000 feet,  I had plenty to choose from. It would have been very easy for me to pick a trail and run for 9 miles, turn around and run back home.  But my eyes kept going back to where the embudo trail connected with the embudito trail.  This junction was about 6 miles east of all the other trails (this was not a topo map, but basic logic should have told me east meant uphill, and uphill meant snow).  The embudito trail wound around to the north and connected back with one of the lower trails.  It looked like roughly the right distance and formed a near perfect circle.  I had a plan.

Bekah and Tracy ran with me for several miles to the beginning of the embudo trail.  I bid them happy trails, and told my wife I'd be back in 2 hours.  Within 10 minutes, it was clear I would be gaining some elevation.  I was scrambling on all fours up boulders and washed out stream beds.  My dog, Alpe, occasionally looking back as if to say "really, are you sure about this?".  But we continued up, up, up until almost an hour later, I had only gone another 4 miles.  I contemplated turning around.  Those thoughts fluttered away though as every twist in the trail looked like it may start heading downhill.  Another mile and I reached the junction with the embudito trail.  We were in the snow now.  It was well packed on the embudo trail, but looked as if there was significantly less traffic traveling forward down the embudito trail.   I looked at my meager map, looked at the gps, shivered a bit, ate some food, took 5 steps forward, then 10 steps back, only to return to my original position at the junction and look at the map again.  Alpe curiously watched this dance, eagerly waiting for the running to resume.  I put the map away, thought to myself "why not?" and took off down the embudito trail.

There had been little traffic the next mile or so and I often sank down to my thighs.  Chilly in shorts, to say the least.  I was initially relieved to see a better packed trail lower down, but that faded rapidly as I began to feel how slippery and uneven the packed snow was.  After almost 4 miles, I finally rounded a bend and was greeted by a blanket of sunshine and a blast of warm air.  Smooth sailing!  It wound up taking 3 and a half hours to cover the 16 miles and over 3000 feet of climbing, but I made it back, gloriously completing the loop.  Maybe next time I'll wait till spring to try this one again...