Delegation members urge agency to allow mountain foot race

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Members of New Mexico’s congressional delegation are urging the U.S. Forest Service to again allow a decades-old foot race that goes through a wilderness area and up into mountains overlooking Albuquerque. Sens. Martin Heinrich and Ben Ray Lujan and Rep. Melanie Stansbury asks the agency to reverse its 2020  decision that the La Luz Trail Race couldn’t be held in the Sandia Mountains. The lawmakers wrote in a letter that the 9-mile event “is a point of pride for New Mexicans and an important source of recreation and tourism.” A U.S. Forest Service official said in 2020 that the race should not have been permitted in the wilderness area since it was a commercial event.