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.