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Participants in Saturday's 5K run take off at the starting line at La Llorona Park. The 5K was one of the events in the inaugural Las Cruces Half Marathon.

LAS CRUCES - From the looks of the crowd Saturday morning on the bank of the Rio Grande, you'd never know the Las Cruces Half Marathon was in its first year.

Cyn Little and her 18-year-old daughter Brianna Hulsey, of Fort Bliss, were surprised to learn that.

"We moved here in August and are still trying to find places to run," said Little, who has run half a dozen full marathons and three half marathons - 13.1 miles - with her daughter.

Friends, family members and co-workers stretched, stripped layers of too-hot-to-run-in fleece and posed for pictures wearing orange-and-white shirts celebrating this newest venue in the USRA Half Marathon Series, which currently organizes such runs in more than 14 cities nationwide.

"It's just fun to be out with people with the same interests," said Little, who planned to take on Saturday's 5K (3.12 mile) route. "It's kind of motivating. You don't know them, but they have the same interests in getting up and running. And people are happy! If you look around, there's people of all ages, all shapes and sizes."

Not far away at the La Llorona Park starting point, Jason Amaro, of Silver City, and his niece Adrianna Hinojosa, 13, of Sierra Vista, Ariz., were eager to get started in the run, which benefits the Asombro Institute for Science Education and included ending festivities with music and refreshments.

"We're going to try to make this an annual event," said Amaro, adjusting his bicep-mounted MP3 player. "This is our first event

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ever, so we're trying to figure out what's what. We're just here to have a good time."

While some runners started easy, with a "Fun Run" at the Field of Dreams, Amaro and Hinojosa planned to challenge themselves.

"I thought it would be kind of cool to run a 5K," said Hinojosa, sporting a pink University of Arizona knit cap, a first-time runner who expected the challenge would be "a little bit hard, a little bit easy."

Most of their family had, at the last minute, decided to stay in bed Saturday morning instead of joining them, Amaro said.

"We're the only brave ones. Everyone else chickened out," he said proudly. The two were looking forward to earning their bragging rights at the family Christmas party, he said: "We're going to show our shirts off!"

Ashley Meeks can be reached at (575) 541-5462.