I’m in Los Alamos, NM this weekend for the Jemez 50.  It’s a race around the city and through the Jemez mountains.  It’s a little more than 50 miles – closer to a double trail marathon.  This should prove to be my hardest 50 miler since it involves an incredible amount of climbing and the lowest point is around 8,000ft.  I’m staying in the City and the park in the picture is just across the street.

I walked through the downtown area last night looking for a place for dinner.  Found a nice cafe with awesome food.  I went back there for lunch today.

I was on the trail by sunrise.  I wanted to hike what looks to be the hardest section of the trail.  It’s an 8 mile stretch that climbs to the top of the ski resort, ~3000ft.  Heat won’t be a problem in this race – it was 38 degrees when I left the car.

When I passed 10,000ft there was a sprinkling of snow.  The picture below is a cool bench that is on the summit.

The climb was as expected and I only got turned around twice.  Both times, I back tracked to understand where I missed the turn so I wouldn’t do it in the race.  I took about 3 hours to do the stretch today, but that was with pictures, 2 phone calls, getting lost, etc…. on race day, I need to do it in 2:35.  I pasted my race card below.  I’m expecting 15 hours which makes it my slowest 50 miler ever – but I’ve never done one with this many climbs.