I think I could spend all day just taking pictures of the girls! Once I am done with my Master's Classes I hope to take a photography class at the University. Steven bought me a fancy camera two years ago and I have yet to learn how to "really" use it.

Fun at the Fair

It was $10 all you can ride night!

Socorro XC wins the Berry Patch Invitational

The Socorro boys won their first meet this weekend in Cloudcroft at the Berry Patch Invitational despite not having two of our normal top five runners. We had the top individual finisher and placed all five of our scoring runners in the top nine overall. We would have had the first and second overall finishers but a wrong turn cost one of our boys the title. Luckily, we were able to keep that title on the team as we had a runner following behind in second. Needless to say the kids were very excited to win and bring home their first team trophy and many individual medals. So far this season had been filled with large meets against large schools so it was nice to get a taste of winning. In the coming weeks we travel to Las Cruces, Los Lunas, Rio Rancho, Grants, and then our district meet in Cobre. Things are looking good for us making it to state and we will be able to race against last years district champ, Cobre, this weekend at Mayfield.

The course was very challenging and fun. There were two hay bale sections and a pit section and many many uphills, fast downhills, and switchbacks. The course was not fast and at 9000 feet elevation, it made several over ambitious runners pay the price later in the race.

Emma came home from school and in her backback I found her name written in cursive! How cute!

Rainy Day Ride...Priceless!

Fashion Galina....

If you ask Emma what she wants to be when she grows up she will tell you several things, however, one of them is a Fashion Galina. I am not sure where she got that name from, but she has stated that she wants to be a fashion model. So, today as we were waiting for the bus to arrive, I wanted to get a quick picture of her on Picture Day at school. Well, I guess she thought she was at a fashion shoot...here are the poses she came up with...and she is only 4! I think we are in for it when she gets older...

Socorro XC in the News...

http://www.nmhssportsnews.com/main/page_coach_montoya_socorro_hs.html

http://www.dchieftain.com/dc/index.php/sports/245-lady-warriors-stride-to-second-place-finish.html

It's too bad the local paper does not publish the photos that go along with the story because they really did have a good one.

Also, in this week's NM Coaches poll, the Socorro girls team is ranked 6th in 3A!

Socorro Stampede XC Race is in the books...

Seems like not that long ago the idea popped into my head that we should have a XC race here in Socorro. We needed to have one here to help promote Socorro XC and to give our friends, families and supporters a chance to see us in action and to see what XC is all about. We had our meet last Friday at the NM Tech golf course. As you can see from the pictures, it's a beautiful setting. Mike came down and was a huge help in getting the course ready. I really could not have done it without him.

We did a 2 loop, 3 mile course using grass, dirt and some cart paths. We even threw in a hay bale section that I think was a big success. We had 5 schools, 4 high school races, and an open race. From what I have been hearing, I think it was fun, well-organized, and challenging.

The girls record is now set at 20:27 and the boys at an amazing 16:06. Our girls finished second to 5A Los Lunas and our boys, despite having their best meet yet, finished a close 5th. The boys side of things was pretty stacked as we had Los Lunas, Valencia, Grants, and Pecos racing. The girls are continuing to do great and are starting to get some attention on the state level. Unfortunately, we will not have the help of our 4 soccer girls for the next 3 weeks as they will have soccer games on the next 3 Saturdays.

The boys had a meet best 7 runners break :20. That number is also our team record, bettering our previous best of 5. To put things in perspective, it took us 4 weeks into the season last year to get one kid to break :20 and the best we ever had last year was three. We also had a meet best pack time of 1:29. Eight of the fifteen boys running ran PB's, and five out of the nine girls running had PB's. We had three boys running 18:XX and two girls running 21:XX.

The results, time wise and meet wise, are encouraging and it lets me know we are doing things right. We are getting faster, Socorro XC is supported, we were able to host a great meet for kids and coaches, and we are are on the right path.

Thanks to Mike and all of the volunteers that came out to help make the Stampede a success.

Slumber Party!

Just relaxing...

Two for me....One for you.

Emma scored two goals for her team, and one goal for the other team at her very first soccer game!! Way to go babe!

Just a little clip of some pictures during Grace's first month!

NM 1/2 Marathon

I ran the NM 1/2 marathon today in Albuquerque in a time of 1:32:19. That is an average 7:01 minute/mile and a whopping 10 minutes faster than I ran this race last year!

I couldn't have asked for better weather as it was cool and overcast. The race starts with a mile or so of downhill then it is as flat as you can get for the remainder of the race. I think I ran well and did my best to run consistent but I know I slowed at mile 8. Up to that point I was averaging just slightly faster than 7:00 min/mile and the dream of breaking 1:30 was dancing in my head. But it was not to last and I slowed slightly. I was able to run by people almost the entire way and it was not until mile 10 that one male passed me and at mile 12 I got "cougar'ed" by not one but two female runners. I just looked up the results and saw they finished 2nd and third respectively in the women's division. Their ages... 47 and 39. Ouch. They were probably stay at home cougars that train all day while their kids are at school so my ego is not too damaged.

Next race is the Elephant Man Triathlon at Elephant Butte later this month. I need to swim and bike some. My goal: improve my time from last year and to not get chick'ed.

Cougars often travel in packs and overtake younger men

who are not at full strength in the late stages of a race.

Alamogordo Invitational

XC Season has started! Here are some pics from this past Saturday's race in Alamogordo. Notice the new uniforms that are not borrowed from track like last year. Another big thing is different this year is that I actually have a girls team. There are 6 of them there but I have 10 girls total and 18 boys. The girls ran well enough to take 3rd ahead of some much larger schools like Alamogordo, Onate, LCHS, Artesia, Silver City, Gadsden, and most importantly the perennial district champs, Cobre.

The boys finished 8th out of the 11 school represented. It is definitely an improvement from last year when we were last. The boys also defeated district rival Cobre despite not being at full strength. Of our top 5 boys, two were absent, one was sick and one didn't tell me he had an ankle injury. The trickiest part of coaching XC is having 5 runners healthy and running their best at the same time in one race. That one race will be our district championships on October 30.

We will continue to work and get stronger. I love it!

Our Trip to Las Cruces

This past weekend we drove down to Las Cruces to visit the two other "Montoya" households! -That would be Mike and Marlene, and Danny and Misha. The weekend was full of food and fun! Emma got to hang out with her cousins Monique and Levi, doing all sorts of fun things... her favorite was Chuck E Cheese! They also made Tie-dye shirts (which were very messy), went for a ride on Uncle Mike's cool bike, where she proceeded to fall asleep, and played every other game you could think of! They were in tears when it was time to leave.