Runners get their green on for Shamrock Shuffle

RIO RANCHO — The day before Saint Patrick’s Day was chilly and breezy but that didn’t stop dozens of runners showing up for the Run Fit Shamrock Shuffle at Loma Colorado Park. By the time all runners had finished their race, the weather warmed up and they were smiling.

One Rio Ranchoan, who ran the 4-mile route, has literally run circles around the city.

Lance Butler placed first in the men’s 50-54 age group and seventh overall, but his achievements go beyond that when it comes to running. He has run on every street in Rio Rancho.

“I think it was 2,008 streets. There’s a website that tracks it,” he said.

The task took him about three years to complete, and it wasn’t always easy.

“Out by Ventana Ranch, there’s a corner of Rio Rancho that nobody knows is actually the city. There’s no pavement out there. But there’s roads that are officially, legally roads,” Butler said.

There were a few incidents, he said, when he ran into some untethered or ungated dogs out there because the homeowners in the middle of nowhere would let them run loose. Despite bumps in the road, Butler ran more than 5,000 miles in that three years, including any overlap roads he may have run.

Butler started running as a way to exercise, and while pursuing a good route to run he would trace his directions on a map.

“So for every run, I’d get home and draw my route with a sharpie. Then I started realizing, ‘Hey, I’d like to run everywhere around my house.’ It kind of went from there. I don’t know that anyone’s ever done it. So I thought it’d be an amazing, and it’d be a ridiculous, stupid goal that nobody else has done,” he said.

Butler intends to keep running and said the Shamrock Shuffle was a good run.

“It was fantastic, and weather was perfect. The organizers did great,” he said.

He was grateful to the Run Fit staff because they successfully rerouted the run to deal with the ongoing construction along Broadmoor Boulevard.

Run Fit was able to reroute the run toward Northern Boulevard and around back to the park.

The run ended with an awards ceremony for each distance, breaking the categories down by age group after the overall winners were announced. The 10K saw Rio Rancho’s Caiden Dawes get first, Albuquerque’s Zach Chenoweth and Jonathan Sanchez get second and third. The 4-miler saw Albuquerque’s Noel Abraha and Angelo Perez get first and second place. Californian Everson Cruz got third.

For more results, visit irunfit.org.