Varvel Family: February Running

Soup In The Snow:

Soup in the snow was so great this year. The trail was way better than last year. We could actually run most of the way without post holing up to our thighs. Plus, we had a couple great surprises along the way.

Our awesome group of runners!

These guys were our first surprise. I rounded the corner, stepped onto one of the bridges, and came face to face with them! They were in the water, and I was on the bridge, but they were so close, I could have reached down and pet them. My heart stopped for a second. I just kept thinking, "please don't be able to jump up onto this bridge!" The mama put her ears back and snorted at me, and then walked a little ways upstream. That's when I got my wits about me, and took some pictures. Then they started walking right towards the trail I had to go on. I was not about to go by them by myself, so I waited a couple minutes for the next runner to come along. It was a girl that had just moved here from CA, so she was thrilled to see them. We made a lot of noise, and went by really fast. Mark caught up to us shortly after that, and he didn't even see them. They were in the trail when the lead runner was coming back down. He was herding them down the trail right towards the last runner that was still on his way up the trail. Holy cow, I would have peed my pants! They just ended up veering off the trail and heading back down into the water, so everything was fine! The poor moose were probably wondering where the heck all these runners were coming from!

Our second surprise was the Yeti when we made it to the lake! He camped there overnight, and had beer and bacon for all the runners as they went by. Hahaha, we passed on the beer, but the bacon was great! I'm so glad we finally had a Yeti encounter in the woods!

Mark doing his push up on the bridge before we headed back down.

Me doing my push up!

The lake looked so pretty that day!

When we all made it back to the trailhead, we had soup in the snow. So fun! This is one of my favorite winter runs!

Eagle Pass Road:

Valentine's Day was cold, and windy! We waited till the afternoon to do our long run, and Mark and I were both dreading it! Sometimes you get rewarded when you just suck it up and do things you don't want to do, and we sure got rewarded on this run! We decided to run down Eagle Pass Road, and possibly climb up the Trail of Bones hill. On the way down the road, the wind was blowing, and the drifts were terrible. It was a lot of trudging, and a little running. Two miles down the road, when we got to the intersection, things got much better. No more huge drifts, we were mostly blocked from the wind, and we started seeing a TON of animal tracks and poop on the road. I was thinking we were bound to see something, when an elk, and deer ran across the road in front of us. We were confused, because we didn't think deer and elk hung out together. We watched them run up the hill, and as we were scanning the hill to see if we could find them, we noticed that the whole hill was covered in deer and elk, all intermixed. Once they realized we were running down the road, the deer stayed put and just watched us, but the elk herd was on the run. It was really cool to watch.

You can't tell how bad the drifts are on the road unless you look at the fence. Lots of fence on the right hand side, but on the left it's barely sticking out of the snow. That gives you an idea of what we were trying to run through.

Here are a few of the deer on the hill. They just climbed up a little higher and watched us run by.

Her's another group. They were everywhere. I'm sure we saw over a hundred of them.

This is a video of when the elk took off running the first time they saw us.

We felt bad that we sent the elk running, so we gave them time to get ahead of us, then we kept on running. We assumed they had just moved on, but they stopped a little ways up the road. Once we ran a little further up the road, we saw them again, and they took off running again. This time they crossed the road right in front of us, and went up the hill on the other side. It was a pretty cool sight.

Here is a video of them crossing the road in front of us.

They ran up the hill on the other side of the road, and then just watched us run by.

There were so many of them!

We kept running, and we saw lots more deer, and more herds of elk up on the hills the whole way down the road. It was so cool!

Once we got to the spot where we were planning on leaving the road, and taking the trail up the mountain, we looked up and realized the whole side of the mountain was covered with another herd of elk! So crazy! There were so many of them, and they were everywhere, so needless to say, we didn't go up the mountain. We just watched them for awhile, and then headed back up the road from where we came.

part of the herd blocking our path up the mountain.

Here's a video of the herd blocking our way up the mountain.

We ended up having a great, and very eventful run! So glad we came out and did it, even though we were dreading it.

The sky looked really cool with the sun setting on our way back to the car. Mark got a few cool pictures of me running (or trudging) back up the road.

If you look closely you can see me running on the road, going around the corner.

Taylor Mountain:

Mark and I officially started our training for our summer races. Our first longish run was an 8 miler. We decided to do Taylor Mountain. Mark had never done it, and I had only done it once on an early morning group run, so it was dark most of the way. It's a 4 mile gradual climb up, and then a fun run on the way back down. We did so good going up! I ran the whole way, and Mark ran most of it. We were feeling pretty good about it, but then realized we were losing sunlight pretty fast, and we didn't have head lamps with us. We ran down pretty dang fast (for us). It was so fun to just let our legs go, but my back paid for it later. Hahaha, I'm too old for that now!

I really like this run a lot! Just the right amount of hill, and it's really pretty. Great winter option!

Looking up toward the old ski resort.

We were treated to a nice sunset on our way down the mountain, and we made it to the truck just as it was getting dark.

Run Your Ice Off Group Runs:

I'm still attending the Wednesday evening group runs. Mark and I try to get 5-6 miles on that day, so it works out perfect with our training, because that's about how far the group goes. Sometimes there are just a few of us out braving the cold, and sometimes there's a lot of us. Either way, it's usually a great time.

Mark was in Los Alamos for the week, so it was just Mike, John, and I. This was a cold night with a few inches of snow on the ground. That scared most people away.

Running in the snow!

This was another fun, cold night. Oh who am I kidding, they are ALL cold nights!

This was a fun, icy run!

I hope they keep doing these runs in the spring and summer. It's so much easier to meet with a group.

IFTR Early Morning Runs:

I really love these early morning runs. I only got to do two of them in February; Bailey had her surgery on the morning of one of them, and one had to be canceled because of crazy negative temperatures. Not just cold, but like negative 15 cold. These are the runs where I get introduced to great winter running options, and I meet other crazy people. I can't wait to do these in the spring and summer so I can actually see the trails in the light.

Comore Loma Run

Blackhawk Road

Women's Runs:

We still try to have a women's 'run' a couple times a month. They are my favorites; I love these ladies! This month we met for a dark, cold run along the canal roads. The week after that, we met for a POUND class to take a break from the snow, and get some cross training in. So fun!

Amanda-Angie-Tricia-Georgina
I call us the core four. We're the four that always come!

POUND was awesome! So much fun! Amy switched nights so she could teach us, and she was awesome. We all had a great time, and got really sore, so it was a win win! I'm totally not coordinated, so I always felt like I was a few moves behind. I felt better when Angie told me she hit herself in the head with her drumsticks. This folks, is why we run! :)

Antelope Island:

We decided we needed dirt under our feet, and sunshine on our faces, so we took a trip to Utah to run at Antelope Island. Mark and I had never been there before, so we were excited. It was perfect! We covered 15 miles (except Steph did 16, and Mat did over 18). We did the White Rock Loop, Beacon Knob, Elephant Head, part of the Split Rock Loop, and finished on the Bone Road Trail. It was so nice not to be bundled up! It gave me a really bad case of spring fever. The trails were fun, the views were fantastic, and the company was great! The best part was stopping at Maddox on the way back for lunch! Yum!