Bob Mann: 2019 Duke City Marathon

On Sun Oct 20 2019, I ran the Duke City Marathon in Albuquerque NM. New Mexico became state #47 for me. As a bit of personal trivia, before this trip New Mexico had been the only state in the US that I hadn't slept overnight in.

Anyway, it had been more than 6 months since my last marathon in Boston. I don't normally take that long between races, but these last 6 months have been quite adventurous. Perhaps 'stressful' is a better word. Less than a week after the Boston Marathon, my wife had a stroke. That certainly put our family's lives into turmoil for a while. Thankfully she had recovered remarkably well. She's still not 100% back to where she was, but she's very close. Maggie has done a terrific job of keeping her spirits up and working hard to get herself back on track. However, our focus as a family was to get us all back to normal over the Summer, thus I didn't even consider traveling to any marathons during that time frame.

And of course, Jillian had softball all throughout the Spring, Summer and Fall. About 50 games in total, and at least that many practices. Sure, I don't have to be at every one of them. But I do find myself at most. And that limits the amount of time I have available to run. That's completely my own choice, of course. But so be it.

Two week before this marathon, my father passed away in Connecticut. He was 97 years old and his health had been fading for a while. He was in rather bad shape for close to a month, so his passing was no surprise. And at 97 years of age, he led a good long life. But that was another thing that didn't help my training leading up to the race.

And lastly, I came down with some sort of illness about 3 weeks before the race, during what would have been my highest training mileage week. Instead, I skipped 6 straight days of runs, and my "heaviest" week ended up being about 3 miles. I skipped my attempt at 20 miles, and then missed it the following week with my dad's memorial service. As a result, my longest run leading up to the marathon was 16 miles. Not ideal, especially since it had been 6 months since I last did the distance. So I was going into this race undertrained. What else is new?

I flew out to Albuquerque on Saturday. I got in early afternoon, went to the expo to get my gear. I had contacted the race people ahead of time and asked if I could get bib #47, since this was my 47th state. They were nice enough to oblige, and I think it's pretty cool that they let me take that number.

I then spent an uneventful evening at a couple of bars in downtown Albuquerque. The downtown section is not exactly a jumpin' hot spot, at least not on a Saturday night. Well, I was able to get to bed early and get a good night's sleep.

The start/finish line was only a couple of blocks from my hotel. It's certainly one of the reasons why I chose that hotel. The race began at 7:00am under cloudy skies. And it was nice and cool. The sun was supposed to come out later, but it wasn't going to get too warm. I couldn't have any complaints about the weather. All the conditions were in place for me to have a fast race. Whatever "fast" means for me anymore. The one potential glitch would be the altitude. Albuquerque sits at about 5,000 feet, which is pretty high for a sea-level resident like me. But I've done races at this altitude before and I'm not sure I ever really noticed anything.

We ran the first two miles within downtown Albuquerque until we reached the Paseo del Bosque trail, which is a bike trail that ran parallel to the Rio Grande. Then we followed that trail until almost Mile 11, at which point we turned onto another trail that ran along next to Paseo del Norte Boulevard Northwest, which was a major crossroad in town. Once we reached Mile 13.1, we turned around and ran back exactly the way we came. So we saw every last thing of the course twice.

I had started out at a 9:36 pace, which is right about what I wanted. Mile 2 was 9:33, which was my fastest of the day. Then I started a gradual but steady decline. Jeez, I should have been able to keep a steady pace for longer than this! Mile 8 was my first mile slower than 10 minutes. I managed to creep back under 10 at mile 11 (9:56), but that was it. From there on, it was gradually slower and slower. The path alongside Paseo del Norte Boulevard had a bit of an include to it and we were gently heading uphill. The path along the river had been quite flat. I reached the halfway point at about 2:11. That's a few minutes slower than I had usually been. Which is about what I figured would happen. While it was slow, I was actually feeling okay.

Once I was past the turnaround, I started to incorporate short walk breaks every mile. The couple miles back to the river were mostly downhill, but I walked the short uphills on this rolling part of the course. Around Mile 16, the sun came out. That certainly wouldn't help my pace. By mile 18, my pace was below 11 minutes per mile. The walk breaks came more frequently. Mile 22 was my first over 12, and everything after that was above 13. I was definitely exhausted, but at least I wasn't feeling awful like I was in Boston. This would be a slow race, but I could basically crawl in and still beat my time from Boston.

It wasn't a crawl, but it wasn't much better than that. My last mile was 14:02, which is mighty darn slow. But it got me to the finish in 4:48:29. It was faster than Boston, but slower than anything else. So be it. More than anything, I'm just happy to get another state checked off the list.

I napped after the race, then headed out to watch some football and celebrate with my typical post-marathon feast of beer and greasy food. My flight back home the next day was delayed by weather so I arrived home quite late. But like the race itself, better late than never.

So, my overall impression of the Duke City Marathon? Well, it was fine. The bike trail was nice enough. There wasn't a whole lot to look at it. It was near the Rio Grande the whole time, but just far enough away from it that I barely caught any glimpses of it. While I do prefer running on trails like this versus running through ugly city industrial areas, a little more variety probably would have been nice. The middle 20 miles of this race were virtually indistinguishable from each other. That's just the way this course was designed. This is not a race to run to see the sights. It was just a morning spent out on a trail. Nothing more, nothing less.

Did the sun over the last 90 minutes slow me down? Probably? Did the altitude slow me down? Probably. Did I get the finish time that I was expecting to get? Probably.

Well, I've now only got 3 states left, so I'm really into the home stretch. The plan will be for me to run in Nashville TN in April, then in Idaho in August, then finish up in Newport RI in October 2020. I've gone a number of years of half-assing these marathons, running them without being very well trained. If you've been reading these Race Reports, you're probably sick of me complaining about that. Well, now that I'm into my final year before finishing, I want to do this right. There's 6 more months until the marathon in Tennessee, and this time I want to train properly, for the first time in eons. I don't know how fast I can run properly trained now, but I'd like to be able to finish one without having to walk so much. Well, we shall see what happens. For all I know, I'll find some other excuse to slack off this Winter...

And now the photos. Click any image to enlarge.