February Running

The winter blues are starting to hit me, and I'm sick of the cold, snow, and ice. I'm trying to have a positive attitude about winter sticking around, because we sure need the snow, especially in the mountains. Getting outside and running helps a ton. It helps my mental health through the winter, and it helps my attitude to see how pretty our winters really are. We had lots of great runs in February!

Women's Runs:

Monday nights continue to be reserved for our Women's Runs, and I still love them. The first Monday night in February, we ran around Snake River Landing. We were treated to a gorgeous sunset. The whole sky was on fire! 

Snake River Landing sunset. 😍

We had a great turn out for how cold it was.

We skipped the 2nd Monday because it was Valentine's Day. We were back at it for a cold run along the canals that have been paved through town.

Testing out my new shoes!

The final February Women's Run was around Tautphaus Park and through the Rose Hill Cemetery. We had another beautiful sunset, and Stacey made us fasnatchts (potato donuts). So good!

Tautphaus Park!

Rose Hill Cemetery!
I took my picture of the sunset too late, but it was awesome!

IFTR Early Morning Runs:

The IFTR early morning Wednesday runs have kind of fallen away for awhile. I hope they pick back up because I love them. I like having my run done first thing in the morning, running in the dark, and having other people to do it with. There were a couple in February, and we met at the river and Snake River Landing. I was the only one to show up for the one at Snake River landing, and the path was so slick that I ended up only going two miles, then finishing up on my treadmill at home.

I took this cool picture of the Temple all lit up with the frozen river. I love running by it in the dark.

Cress Creek Canal:

I met Steph in Ririe when she got off work for a fun canal run. The first part of the path was crazy snow, but it eventually evened out and got packed down on the more popular part of the trail. I'm sure this is going to be my go to trail once we live up there.

Half the river was frozen.

The Butte with Joyce & Jen:

I love my Thursday adventures with Jen and Joyce. It's usually a ton of cracking up and goofing off, with a little bit of running mixed in. We picked a perfect day for the Butte. It was foggy with frost on EVERYTHING! I love when it's like that!

This lone, frosted tree looked so cool in the fog on our way up.

Everything has coated with frost. So pretty!

Climbing up!

Jen-Joyce-Tricia

We stopped at the top to do a little jumping off rocks. 😂

Jen catches serious air, and I just try to stay alive. 😂

Just me forgetting that I'm a 48 year old with a bad back! 😂

The fog was so dense that we couldn't even see all the way through the caldera.

We found more rocks to climb on. 

I love getting pictures through this hole in the rock.

The Butte with Mark & Mat:

I loved the fog and frost on the Butte so much on Thursday, that I went back on Friday with Mark and Mat. I love that these two have the same Fridays off work. The Butte was even better today. It was colder, so the frost was crazy! We did 10.5 miles, so we added a little bit of the desert across the street too.

Every tree and bush was covered in spikey frost.

It looked so cool!

fascinating!

This tree looked so cool!

Mat-Tricia-Mark

Going down through the foggy caldera.

I wish the pictures could do it justice.

Bone Road:

We needed a 20 miler, and decided to do Bone Road all the way past the Bone Store. These kinds of runs are always more fun with friends, so we decided to make an 'event' at the last minute. We had so many people come out on a freezing morning to suffer with us. It was DANG cold! I was thinking the run was going to be miserable because it's very hilly, and we aren't used to running that far on pavement. It ended up being great! I pushed the hills on the way out, and ended up being able to run them all. I was pretty excited about that, because my hill game goes to pot over the winter. We just took it easy on the way back. People just went various distances and ran at their own paces. It was a great morning!

Most of the people; we had a couple get there late.
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Daniel and Josh were also there but missed the picture.

We started just as the sun was coming up.

Great view of the Tetons.

A great crew!

We made it to the Bone Store!

Mark and Carney climbing the final hill.

Gibson Jack:

Another fun adventure with Joyce and Jen! We all signed up for a race in Pocatello in May. It's gonna be a hard one, and we went down to do some of the course so Jen and Joyce could get a feel for what they were in for. I did it last year, so I am familiar with the course. The snow appeared to be packed, but we kept breaking through unexpectedly. That caused lots of falls, and some epic face plants. 😂 The snow made it slow going, so we only made it to the pink gate then turned around to head back. We had beautiful skis that day.

Gibson Jack Trailhead!

Beautiful day to run in the snow!

Face plant! Poor Jen fell so many times! The snow would just drop out from under you and send you flying forward.

I lost my leg clear past my knee! 😂

The final climb to the pink gate is really pretty!

The famous pink gate!

Jen-Joyce-Tricia

Another great fall! 😂

Joyce had Turtle Bites for us at the end!

On our drive out, we saw a big herd of deer with lots of cute babies. This one posed for me.

Palisades:

Every time Steph and I decide to go alone up Palisades, we end up with the most beautiful day! It's becoming a great pattern! We were the first ones on the trail, and we were shocked at how much fresh, powdery snow there was! It made it a total winter wonderland! We hadn't gone very far up the trail before we were following very fresh mountain lion tracks. It walked on the trail mostly, but went off a couple times, and then reentered the trail just up a ways. About a mile and a half up the trail we heard people behind us. It was two guys, a lady, and a couple darling dogs. We told them about the tracks (because our footprints messed them up), told them to keep an eye out, and let them pass. About a quarter mile up the trail, they had stopped and waited for us, because they were pretty sure they heard the cat. They heard a hiss, and a groan sound off the trail to the right, but we never saw anything. Needless to say, we stayed with them for the next couple miles. It's always an exciting adventure on the trails!

The new snow was so powdery.

Right from the start we knew it was going to be  beautiful on the trail.

This was right at the start, and it just got deeper, the farther up we went.

Here kitty kitty!

This was when we started following the cat tracks.

So pretty!

It looked like a winter postcard scene every direction we looked.

The cat went over the bridge and then the tracks went off the trail.

The snow was getting deeper, and the views were getting even better!

This was us sticking with the group for a while.

Steph almost fell, I laughed, and then I fell. 😂 As you can see, our hands were no help in keeping us up.

The lower lake was so pretty!

There are things I just can't resist doing when the snow is that powdery!

It was a perfect angel! You could even see the pattern of my hat in it!

Antelope Island:

We needed to get a 30 miler in, and the thought of doing that in the snow and ice did not sound fun at all. Mark made an 'event' to head to Utah and run on Antelope Island. We did this a couple years ago in February, and it ended up being perfect. As the event got closer, the weather down there wasn't great. We were worried that we would drive all that way and have tons of snow, mud, or ice. We got so lucky, and other than it being really frigid cold at the beginning, we had perfect conditions! Just dirt, blue skies, and sunshine. It was so great! There are lots of buffalo on the Island, and we did run into a large herd right on our trail. That was fun! 

Ya know how I always write about how great the Idaho Falls Trail Runners are? This is the perfect example of what I mean. We had 15 people get up at 4:00 in the morning, drive for over 3 hours, run a ton of miles, just to get back in the car and drive over 3 hours home when we were done. 

The rad crew!
Mark-Georgina-Amanda-Steph-Tricia-Jen-Michelle-Carrie-Mat-Carney-Jeff-Joyce-Larissa-Jenn-Steve

And we're off!

The island is pretty in the winter because all the mountains surrounding the Great Salt Lake are covered in snow.

Ten People did 31 miles, three people did 20 miles, and two people did 8-12 miles. I think that is amazing! This is our 31 mile crew!

Jenn-Tricia-Amanda-Larissa-Georgina-Michelle
Our trail running community is full of amazing women!

It was so cool to see so many of us lined up running down the trail.

So pretty!

He's my favorite! 😍

I loved the snow covered mountains next to the blue water.

The buffalo were standing on our trail. A few people went down there and got them off the trail. Watching that gave me some serious anxiety. The rest of us went way off to the left, off the trail to get around them. There was no way I was getting near them.

This run marked the farthest Georgina and Steve had ever run. They had both completed a marathon distance in the past, so when they hit 27 miles we cheered and celebrated. Georgina saved her bacon for this moment! 😄

We stopped for some very earned burgers and shakes when we were all finished.

It was another great month of running. There were so many more runs in February too, but they are written about in different post. We had the Bad Ideas of Winter, and our trip to Boise. Good times!