Hey this is Blaine Moore from RunToWin.com, and I got to take part in the last Ghost Town 38.5, which is a race about a hundred miles from the Mexican border down in New Mexico, and it was a lot of fun.

It was basically a birthday treat that my wife and I went down there, and we kind of made a week long thing of it. Visited some friends that lived not too far from there, so we got in late on Thursday night.

On Friday, my buddy has a lot of fun bringing anyone that comes visit up to Sandia Crest which looks out over Albuquerque, and he likes to see which of his friends are susceptible to altitude sickness.

Thankfully, I wasn’t. I’ve never really been at that altitude before.

The crest was around 10,300 feet. We went for 4 and a half, 5 mile hike through the snow; which for the most part was pretty easy.

There’s a few points where we were off of the beaten path, and we’re waist deep, or deeper, snow which is more than we have here in Maine right now, but it was a lot of fun.

So on Saturday morning before the race, we were still in Albuquerque. I baked up 4 loaves of bread, and we made up some baclava.

Unfortunately, we forgot to bring the baclava with us, but at least we were able to bring the bread down.

We took off a little after noon. We went down towards… it’s about a 3 hour drive to get down to Hillsboro, which is where the race took place. And we went in for the pre-race check-in and packet pickup. Took care of all those details, and it was quite the process.

Susan’s got everything kind of managed down to a tee, so she knows exactly what she wants.

It was certainly the longest waiver I’ve ever had to sign. It had a few different places where you would say that not only are you having the normal waiver language, but you also have language that if you don’t make a cut off, then you agree you’re going to stop.

So what we did, we filled all that stuff out. There was an hour-long Q & A session where people were able to get their questions answered about the course, and then we went in for the pre-race dinner; and that was a lot of fun.

If she ever starts putting this on again, or if she puts on any other events, you know you’re gonna get fed well.

The people that were there Friday night I guess got a meal. Saturday night, we got a really big pot-luck dinner. There were some people slaving away in the kitchen all day long to get everything ready. There was like 4 or 5 kinds of pasta. There were some vegan dishes. There were plenty of salads and desserts. It was very good.

There was also a bluegrass band that was performing for us. She had a raffle of all kinds of great goodies: sunglasses, shirts, hats, gloves, gift certificates.

It was actually kind of funny, we told our friends that came down with us that while Erin and I were definitely not going to win anything, we were pretty sure that they would. And they both wound up winning something in the raffle.

My friend Emily got a gift certificate to a local running store up in Albuquerque, which is convenient, since she was in the market for some new shoes. And my friend Nate managed to get some soiled white running gloves that somebody had left behind at an aid station last year, which was kind of funny.

So we called it a night. We went back. We’d rented this great house that was only about a half mile from where race headquarters was. So it was an easy walk. It had 2 different buildings. The first one had the kitchen, living rooms, a big bedroom. And then there was a casita that had just… it was basically just a bedroom and a bathroom, and also had a wash available.

So we made it an early night, got up the next morning. It was fairly cold, but not as cold as it had been here in Maine. It was in the low 30’s. So we went over.

You had to check in before the race by 5:45. And then the volunteers (my wife and my friends were volunteering at the hilltop station), so volunteers made their way out to their points on the course, and the runners waited for the countdown.

We got some last minute instructions, and on the nose at 6 AM we started the race.

It’s an interesting course. The first 6+ miles are on a road, and you’re pretty much going uphill the entire way. There’s a few dips, but for the most part, you’re going up.

Even with the moon out, it was still really dark. You definitely needed a headlamp. There were cattle guards all along the road to keep the cows from using that as their major direction of travel. So you had to be really careful not to step into the middle of one of them, because there’s nothing over them. You’re just expected to watch your step.

And then you get to junction station. And that’s where you turn right on to a dirt jeep road that goes up through the Gila National Forest.

So we went in and you follow that up a few more miles, you get to the stone hut aid station and the volunteers check you off.

And then after that you get to my favorite part of the course, which was the forest trail spur, where you turn on to the single track trail, you cross over a creek. And there’s a few inches… between 2 and 5 inches of snow throughout this section that you had to run through. And it wasn’t too bad running.

I didn’t really lose traction too much. I had my Inov-8 X-Talons on. So I had a nice tread for going through there. And you basically follow that out for a mile/mile plus until you start climbing up towards an abandoned mine.

We we got out of the snow at that point, but it was a nice steep climb. You got to the top and there was a guy in a costume at the top checking off all of the runners’ names.

Then you turn back, head back to the jeep road and you continue on.

And the jeep road continues on through hilltop station, which is where my friends were.

And as you follow along after hilltop, it does start to degrade a little bit. You get another mile or so, and then it starts to… technically it’s still a jeep road, but it’s not something I’d bring any of my vehicles on.

It definitely gets broken up. Gets a lot rockier. There were some icy patches. Although they were for the most part pretty easy to run around.

And you get through, you see some amazing views. You’re just out in the wilderness. There was plenty of mountain lion and bear tracks.

I did hear snarling at one point off in the woods. I don’t if it was snarling as in it was a mountain lion or if it was a snorting kind of sound, maybe from javelina. But whatever it was, I never saw what made the noise. I did see some birds.

After you get around the 22 mile mark, you get to the turn around. And some of the boy scouts were nice enough to hike in there with some water, and they check you off, and you just pretty much run back and you do everything in reverse, except you don’t do the trail spur again. So we didn’t get to run on the fun single track a second time.

I ran pretty well. I didn’t take in nearly as many fluids or nutrition as I normally would.

The race starts about a mile in elevation, around 5300 feet. You spend the first 10 miles climbing up to around 7000 feet elevation. And it’s kind of similar to Pineland Farms where there’s just nothing flat. You’re always either going up or down.

So once you get up to the top then you’re constantly either going up a hill or down a hill, and you pretty much stay right around that 6800 to 7200 feet range, and then you spend the last 10 miles pretty much just coming back down.

It was great weather. I decided before the race not to even start with my pants or with my winter hat on. I just went with shorts and baseball hat, which I think was a good decision. I knew within 4 or 5 miles I wasn’t going to want them anyway, so this way I didn’t have to take them off, and I wasn’t uncomfortable at all.

The heat did start to come out towards the middle of the day, around 11 o’clock, and I did have a little bit of trouble. Whether it’s from fatigue, from my lack of training lately, or whether it was from the elevation, or just because it was a hotter part of the day…

I was struggling around mile 26, 27ish up through around maybe 31, 32ish. And I was able to kind of work through it. But I just hadn’t taken in nearly as much water as I thought. I had a hydration pack on. I was carrying 70 ounces with me. I figured based on how much I’ve been drinking in previous runs that that would last me a good 4 or 5 hours, however I would up only drinking 20 ounces out of my pack. So I basically carried a few pounds of water with me the entire race.

I did have 3 cups of water as I went along through at the aid stations. And I had 1 bottle of water at the hilltop station. I drank half of it on the way out, half on the way in. So at the very most, I had 40 ounces of water the entire race, and that’s probably a very generous estimate.

I also had 3 gel packets, and that was it. I didn’t eat anything else during the race. So it was a 38 mile race and I took fewer gels than I would in an equivalent marathon, but it seemed to work out okay for me. Other than that 5 or 6 miles where I was struggling a little, I felt pretty good most of the way.

Once I got back to the junction station, I saw somebody… he didn’t wind up dropping, he did finish, but he was just sitting there with his shoes off so I thought, “Okay, I might have a chance to move up a few places.”

I got back to the road and I looked ahead. Two of the guys that had just powered past me, both were in view. I didn’t think I was ever going to see them again. So I spent the first 2 miles on the road just trying to reel them back in. And those were actually my fastest 6 miles. They were downhill and they were on the road, but the last 6 miles of the race I just powered through.

I tried passing those guys with enough conviction that they wouldn’t feel a need to try and keep up with me. So over the last 4 miles after I had gotten by them both, I managed to put like 6 and 14 minutes on them respectively.

I was able to in 5th place overall, which I was very happy with. And I was also the recipient of the Marty Duchow award, which is awarded to the first person that finishes that lives below a thousand feet of elevation.

But it was a great time. There was a lot of food after the race. So again, we get back to you definitely have plenty to eat during this whole thing. There was some soups, salads available, some pasta, tamales.

And then it’s around, it would have been 5:30, the last runner came through. There was a 12 hour cut-off, everybody made it. He finished in 11 and a half hours. So we were all sitting out at the end of the drive way, or over by the finish line, and everybody was cheering all the runners in as they come in. And we made a little tunnel for the runners to come through, patting them on the back.

And then at 6 o’clock, we had the post race barbeque. Yet another meal! So there was plenty of burgers, veggie burgers, a few more salads, some of the leftover food from the night before, and a quick overview of who won the awards, since they kind of been awarded as people came through.

There’s a lot of unique awards for this race, such as the Martin Luther King award which goes to the 17th finisher since Martin Luther King Day is on the 17th this year. There was the Mamaw Ruby award which went to the… I think the 57th finisher which is the age of the race director, Susan. And there’s the Jeff Johnson, which was the person who was the most improved in 2 consecutive years from Ghost Town.

And there’s just a lot of fun. It was a good atmosphere, and it was well-worth going out for. During the pre-race dinner, I actually had everybody singing a happy birthday to me, which is the first time I’ve had probably 90 plus people singing happy birthday. Susan gave me a cake that she had made. And everyone was so stuffed that even cutting it up into little pieces, I was still only able share out about half of it before everyone kind of filtered out for the night. The funny part was that she had told my wife that the cake only had… it was only big enough for 4 people. And it was a pretty good-sized cake. So I don’t know how big a portion that she’s used to having people eat, but it was certainly a lot bigger than anyone could fit in after the dinner.

So my final time was 6 hours 24 minutes 24 seconds. Got me below my 6 and a half hour goal time that I had had. If I’d been able to train a little bit more of going into the race, I think I could have probably run right around 6 hours, or maybe down to around 5:50. But it was a lot of fun. I was able to maintain the pace that I wanted. I met a lot of great people. And it’s definitely just worth going out and running. The views were just amazing! You’ll have seen from some of the pictures in this video, you don’t see that kind of terrain out here in Maine.