13.1 miles through Agua Fría Village and the Santa Fe River corridor — from Romero’s Park to Reunity Resources Farm.
Why this course exists
In 2007 a conservation group in Washington published its annual list of America’s most endangered rivers. Top of the list — ahead of anything in the Everglades — was a river most people outside New Mexico had never heard of.
The Santa Fe River. Number one. A river that, for months of the year, wasn’t really there at all.
You’re going to spend your morning running beside it.
Back in the 1980s the city proposed encasing the river in concrete for flood control, and the people who live here said no. What they asked for instead took twenty-five years: a gravel mine moved out of the channel, erosion structures dug in, hundreds of cottonwoods planted along banks that had been collapsing for decades.
Nobody plants a cottonwood for themselves. They take too long.
So the middle miles of this race — roughly mile 4.9 out to the turnaround at nine, and back — run on the Santa Fe River Trail itself, the path the restoration built. You run straight through both of the parks that came out of it — San Isidro River Park, where the gravel mine used to be, and Agua Fría Park at mile 6 — in a valley farmed for a thousand years, on a corridor that carried traders between Mexico City and Santa Fe for nearly three hundred of them. You finish at Reunity Resources, a working farm still doing the same work, and eat in the shade of their trees.
It is not the fastest course we’ve run. It climbs 651 feet to a turnaround at mile nine and makes you earn the way home. But it’s the one that best explains where you are.
Gold: the opening village loop, run once. Orange dashes: the river corridor, run out and back with a centre cone line. Numbered pins are mile markers — blue squares are the five aid stations, X pins the relay exchanges, P the parking lots. Tap any pin for details and rolling closure times.
You start at Romero’s Park, loop through the village, then head out along the river to the turnaround at mile 9 and come back the same road to the finish at Reunity Resources Farm.
It climbs steadily from mile 5 to the turnaround at 6,883 ft — the high point of the day — then gives every foot of it back on the way home.
Tap any numbered mile marker on the map above to see what is around you at that point. The blue squares are the five aid stations, and each pin shows its rolling closure time.
The finish line is at Reunity Resources Farm, 1829 San Ysidro Crossing, Agua Fría. Everything you need at the farm is on these pages:
13.1 miles · GPS-measured · Opening loop + out-and-back
Start: Romero’s Park | Finish: Reunity Resources Farm
Team of 3 splits 13.1 miles across relay exchange zones along the route
Saturday, Sept 18 · Timed · 2027 routes to be announced
Non-competitive fun run · Free to enter · For young runners
2027 registration isn’t open yet. Early-bird 5K entry starts at $30. The Half Marathon runs Sunday, Sept 19; get race updates and we’ll tell you the day it opens.
