The Glorieta Baldy Challenge - Take 2

About this time last year I wrote this post about a run up a mountain I did. Well we are back in the same location this year in New Mexico and I figured I needed to try and better my time. I've been asking around if there's any place where records are kept of previous runs but it seems hard to find. I did talk to a fellow runner who ran it back in the 70's in about 2:20. So if you've run Baldy or want to I'd love for you to leave a comment here with your time so we can keep a record of it. The challenge is to start behind the old firehall, write your name in the hikers book there when you leave and when you return. A break at the top to enjoy the view can be subtracted from your time. I took about 15 minutes up there before heading back down today.

It's a fun challenge to run at 7500+ feet when you're used to living pretty close to sea level. That's part of the draw for me I think. I say run but honestly going up I walked nearly as much as I ran since it is so steep. I plugged my watch in and downloaded all the data and thought it would be cool to share. So below is a screen shot of what my Garmin tells me I did. You can see graphs of the elevation, pace and heart rate changes. Looks like I started out too hard by looking at my heart rate. Will need to fix that next year!

You can see all of the stats across the top of the screen shot. My finishing time was 2:17:52! Better than last year. Can't ask for much more. Although I'll want to beat it again next year.

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The Glorieta Baldy Challenge

**If you have run Glorieta Baldy I'd love to keep a tally of the best times here so drop a comment with your time and I'll keep updating the blog with the newest times.**

I've spent the last week in Glorieta New Mexico which sits at about 7500 feet above sea level. So for the first few days I was constantly out of breath and needing to drink lots of water. After a couple of days which included some short runs and some extra napping I was feeling like my body had acclimatized so I decided at the end of the week I would try a pretty crazy run, at least by my standards.

There is a mountain peak here called Glorieta Baldy with a trail that takes you right to the top. The peak puts you at about 10,300 feet. It's a pretty advanced hiking trail with some serious elevation changes over short distances. The rumour around the camp here is that someone has run up and down in just under 2 hours. So I thought I would give it a try and see how close I could come.

I started in front of our hotel, The Hall of States, ran to the trailhead and continued up to Baldy only stopping my watch when I got to the top. My time to the peak was 1:31:23 The last 1.5 miles feel like they are pretty much straight up and are very difficult to do any running in. But when I reached the top the view was worth all the work. Here's a picture from the top looking down at the camp.


And this is the lookout tower you can climb up to get above the tree line for a great 360 view.

Coming down was much quicker and hurt just as much, just in different places. I made it back to the hotel in 2:27:53.

Here are some stats on the trail.

Total climb - 2,699 ft.
Top Elevation - 10,200 ft.
Distance up - 5.1 mi (from trailhead)

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