When an Awesome Run gets Awesomer

Visiting and running in Boulder this last weekend. Memories from my days as a student are now more than a decade past and my internal map of the area trail system is incoherent. A wonderful side-effect of such haziness is to run unfamiliar trail sections then round a bend or exit a grove of trees to a marvelous and long forgotten viewpoint. Like greeting an old friend - over and over and over again. It's an enlightened experience, especially when you're also running with an old friend.

Our Sunday long run routed up and over and through until we made a quick change in direction and cut to a little known thru-trail in a residential area. At the bottom of the hill, setup right off the footpath, were two guys dolled up in red cocktail dresses and makeup, unloading three coolers of ice and Pabst beer from a truck. It was like the day couldn't have been a more perfect day, than this. Beaming, I laugh and call out through a maniac's grin, 'we've been looking everywhere for you!'

At this, the red-dress guys frown and look confused. They were expecting a group of runners in matching red dresses to come through, but we dropped in from the opposite direction, outfit in regular dirtbag attire plus mud-caked shoes and ankles. Little of this made sense to them at that moment. In contrast and in an apex of irony, their presence made clear and absolute sense to me along with my fading memories of life in Boulder in my 20's. The badassness of hitting an inadvertent beer stop during a long run ranks quite high. To be fair, it's most likely an act of God. I may have even said this out loud, in which one red-dress guy blinked slowly and indifferently in response. Then we remembered there was an incredible amount of beer sitting at our feet and we laughed and laughed. One celebratory PBR and several hi-fives later and we were clipping down the path again, stepping briefly to the side as an impressive fleet of on-coming runners feted in red dresses stormed right on by.

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The Santa Fe Watershed Association's new Arroyo Project

The Santa Fe Watershed Association is partnering with Santa Fe Brewing for the launch of SFBrewing's new Hefeweizen River Brew. The beer label will incorporate the SFWA's logo design (at left), and if this launch is similar to last year's partnership with the Santa Fe Conservation Trust, something like $.25 from each pint or can will go toward support of SFWA and their mission. Aside from rehabilitating the Santa Fe River (which is slowly rising back to life) SFWA's newest project is to begin restoration and cleanup work on some of our major arroyos. A fundraising goal of $10,000 has been set for the work they're planning which ties-in to the new marketing campaign for River Brew.

As it happens, I spend a fair amount of my time hanging out in arroyos as well as wedging in a minute here and there to admire the occasional pint of beer. The Desert Babe doesn't find either of these interests to be much of a coincidence. Point being, this project and fundraising effort is a stroke of unholy genius which includes a Beer/Project launch party on June 10th. It's as if they sat around brainstorming how to come up with raddest invite list to their summer party, and someone was like: What if we invite mostly just the cool people rockin' out the arroyos, and those hiking and biking the drainages and creeks, and those that love snow and the rain, and maybe maintain other trails in their spare time, and really like beer? NAAAILED IT.

Incredible Santa Fe arroyo map

This guest list self-selects of course. So head over to the fundraising page to get your ticket to the event, or a shirt, or a hat, or a package with all the stuff. If you're too lazy to do this then make a point to show up at Del Charro on June 10th for the party and bring your checkbook. Too lazy to remember any of this or too poor to part with $10-$20?, then show up to lend a hand with the arroyo work when that begins. For added incentive I'm going, and I've got two extra tickets for the event (which includes a pint glass) that I'll give away via random drawing to folks who will share, post, tweet or re-tweet the current fundraising effort. Add your name in the comments below that you shared and want to be included in the drawing. Add something witty or complimentary to bend the odds in your favor. You can also send an email if you're internet averse but an anonymous comment is strongly suggested. Something about how beer is delicious or a quip about your favorite arroyo is fine.

And with that, time for a run.

Related Posts:

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New Mexico Snowpack Melts Six Weeks Early

Atalaya in storm clouds

Beautiful rainy week in northern New Mexico. I love it when it's like this. Ever run in the foothills when you're literally ascending/descending through cloud banks? Bad AF. One time I was up there with clouds and fresh spring snow but the snow was saturated and melting and all the ravines and drainages were running and cascading like a Japanese garden. Top 5 all-time run that one.

So I was checking out the area river gauge data to get a sense of how much rainfall arrived this week, and I saw something unexpected that made me kinda grumpy. Yeah there's enough rain in this week's storms to bring the Rio up 500 cfs. But when you look at the 60 day graph you can see that the 44 year average (the yellow triangles) are showing that we ought to be at peak snowpack runoff right now. The blue line however shows that our snowpack burned off the last two weeks of March. Not cool. Beautiful weather we're having but June/July could be rough when our water is chilling down in Elephant Butte.

Here's the Santa Fe River data. Same story. No average trend line to compare but the melt in March is clear as day with a longer tail than the flow in the Rio. No mames buey.  

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