Varvel Family: March Running

Women's Runs:

We had some great Women's Runs in March! The snow is starting to melt, the days are staying lighter for longer, and we incorporated food and Strava art!

We kicked it off with a 6 miler on the Idaho Canal. We had a beautiful night!

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The Idaho Canal

Next we had a taco run! It doesn't get much better than that! We called in a big order of street tacos, ran around the river until we got to Jaliscos, picked up our tacos, and ran back with them. Then we ate! That is my kind of run!

Amanda ran quite a ways carrying this big pan of tacos! 😂

Yum!

The Monday after our 4X4X48, we took it easy along the canals in town. I actually ended up feeling better than I expected.

For our next couple runs, we got into some serious Strava art! 😂 Amanda created this adorable dinosaur, so we ran until our Strava map showed him. So fun!

We were pretty dang proud of ourselves!

Oh my gosh, I love him!

We were at it again the following week. Georgina made a cat!

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So cute!

IFTR Early Morning Group Runs:

Our first early morning run of the month was at Boat Launch Park, a new place for me to run. It was dark, but it seemed like a great early season option.

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Boat Launch Park

Next brought us to Hawk's Landing for hill repeats.

We actually had Josh and Mike there too, but Mike fell on ice and hit his head pretty good on the asphalt. 😳

We had a good crowd for Buck Road. It was dark the whole time, but even when it's light, there isn't much to see.

Our last one of the month was at 8:00 instead of 5:15. That was a fun change. It brought a whole different group of people. Trail Hollow is one of my favorites in the foothills.

We had a big group, but a few had already left.

Yay for no snow on the road!

The Butte:

We've been spending a little bit of time on the Butte since Spitfire is coming up.

One of the times, we had our whole group of Geagles up there!

The Geagles
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Pretty sunrise!

My favorite running buddy.

Another time we did it on a Friday afternoon when Mark got off work. We had Jenn and Joe join us.

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There is a melted snow lake out in the desert that was really fun to get around.

4X4X48 Challenge:

We decided it would be fun to give the David Goggins 4X4X48 Challenge a try. You run 4 miles, every 4 hours, for 48 hours, for a total of 48 miles. We knew it would be a lot more fun with friends, and we knew we had plenty of them who would be crazy enough to join us! We had eight people staying at our house, and Bailey and Mason doing it from Boise. Good times!

We had Steph upstairs in the guest room, Jenn up in Sawyer's room, Mat & Carrie downstairs in Bailey's room, Cheryl in the music room, and Amanda on the couch in the living room downstairs.

Every four hours I would ring a cow bell for the 10 minute warning to make sure everyone was awake and ready to go. We did awesome at keeping to our schedule. We divided up meals, and everyone brought snacks to share, so we had plenty to fuel with in between running and sleeping. Most of us stayed awake for the daylight hours, and just watched movies, played games, showered, etc. in between runs. We all tried to sleep as much as possible in between the night time runs. At most we would get 2 hours of sleep in between. The lack of sleep was the hardest part.

This is how I welcomed all the runners! 😂

I had cute medals made up for everyone.

We started at 8:00 on a Thursday night. Our first route was Trail Hollow. We weren't expecting the amount of snow we had to trudge through, so the first leg was the hardest. Opps! 😂

Leg 1-Trail Hollow-8:00PM

Our second leg was at midnight, so we just did a loop through my neighborhood.

Leg 2-Neighborhood Loop-Midnight

Leg three was at 4:00 AM, and we went down Hitt Road and back.

Leg 3-Hitt Rd-4:00AM

Leg four was at the greenbelt at 8:00 in the morning.

We all wanted to ride together, so we crammed everyone in Mark's truck. We had seven people in there!

Steph and I were spooning in the front seat. 😂

Leg 4-Greenbelt-8:00AM

Leg five was at Snake River Landing at noon.

Leg 5-Snake River Landing-Noon

Leg six was on the Sunnyside Canal at 4:00PM. Georgina joined us for this one.

Leg 6-Sunnyside Canal-4:00PM

Yay, this was the half way point!

We knew these next few night ones were going to be the hardest. We figured if we could get through these, we would be able to finish.

Leg seven was along the canals through town at 8:00PM

Leg 7-Canals-8:00PM

Leg eight was the Hitt Road, John Adams, Woodruff, Kearny loop. This one was at midnight and we were getting a bit loopy.

Leg 8-Loop-Midnight

Leg nine was down 1st St. and back. There are some weirdos out at 4:00 in the morning!

Leg 9-1st Street-4:00AM
We were missing a few people for this one. Amanda and Cheryl had to do theirs on their own because they were having two separate cat issues. Mat woke up late, so he went out by himself when we got back.

Leg ten was at Freeman Park at 8:00 in the morning. We were feeling pretty tired at this point, but we were confident we'd all finish. It was a relief to have all the night ones done. Cheryl's mom and dad met us there for this one. It was fun each time we had different people join us.

Leg 10-Freeman Park-8:00AM

We caught Mark snoozing!

Leg eleven was at Community Park. We had Dan come run a couple laps with us, and Ryan Walker showed up to run the whole leg with us. Almost done!

Leg 11-Community Park-Noon

Our very last leg was the canal road behind my house. We started at 4:00PM on Saturday. We were all so glad to be finishing! We had Cheryl's dad join us again, and Stacey came for the last one.

Leg 12-Canal Road-4:00PM

Here I am finishing my 48 miles! So glad to be done!

Mark finishing something he swore he'd never do! 👊

We had a little medal ceremony when we were all done, and then we went for a celebration dinner at Texas Roadhouse!

Bailey and Mason finished in Boise just before we did. They facetimed in for the medal ceremony. Good job guys!

So proud of him! Not only did he finish this madness, but he was one of the stronger runners the whole time!

👏👏👏

Yay for crazy ideas, and people who jump on board to carry them out with us!
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It felt so good to cross off the last route!

IFTR Spring Social:

We had an IFTR spring social on the fist day of spring. We did it Idaho style, in the freezing cold and snow. 😩 When we left our house it was pouring rain. By the time we got to Boat Launch Park it had started snowing, which is better than the rain. By the time we finished our 10K, it was a wet, foggy, sleet. We ended up soaked.

The fog along the river.

We thought we might be the only ones there, but even despite the weather, there was a great turn out. There were lots more people too, but lots of them grabbed breakfast and headed to their warm cars. Brrr!

Lower Palisades Lake Hike:

A year ago, Jenn and I tried to take RJ to the lower lake, but we got stopped by an icy snow slide within a half mile from the top. We tried to get around it, but Jenn slid into the creek, so we were forced to turn around without making it. This year, we got him there, and we saw a moose, and a mountain goat for big bonuses!