Brian Johnson (MM8807, HF7287, DA707) –Shiprock Marathon Recap, May 4, 2024
Marathon Distance or longer 50 complete.
State 26.
Shiprock Marathon, Shiprock, New Mexico.
I didn’t plan for this to be my 50th Marathon when I registered for it a while ago. It just happened that way.
The Shiprock Marathon is in North-Western New Mexico on the Navajo Nation lands. It’s held the first weekend in May.
It’s a small marathon, but very back-of-the-pack friendly. There were less than 200 of us that completed the marathon.
When I went to packet pick-up, I specifically asked for Bib 50, since it was going to be my 50th Marathon.
Is this an easy race? No. The course itself is pretty simple, but you are at altitude and running a very big hill. If you haven’t done a lot of hill work, this will get very humbling very quickly.
Back to the course. You start in the town of Shiprock at the Youth Center. The course goes 13 miles out toward the Shiprock Pinnacle, and then you turn around and come back. You will get within a mile of Shiprock, but never actually touch it.
The specific relevant content for this request, if necessary, delimited with characters: On Race morning, we were greeted by the head of the Navajo Nation.
When the race started, we spread out pretty quickly.
The course itself runs along asphalt roads the entire time. The course is pretty boring. It’s the open desert. It’s beautiful. But if crowd support is your thing, there isn’t a lot of it.
There is an occasional band along the way.
But again, open desert.
There were aid stations about every mile. Some of them had amusing motivational signs.
I ended up having to walk a lot more than I wanted to. I felt something that seemed like a rock in my shoe. When I stopped at mile 11 to see what it was, I had a really bad blister.
I had to walk from mile 11-19. The blister had broken. And it hurt.
Around mile 19 I started running again because I just wanted to be done.
I felt ecstatic as I reached the final 5-mile downhill stretch toward the youth center.
Even though my time was nearly 50 minutes slower than in Carmel 2 weeks prior, I was unfazed by the blister I was running on.
I had achieved my goal: completing 50 marathons or longer before my 50th birthday in December.
Photo and Post Credit Brian Johnson
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