November Adventures

I'm not even gonna try to sugar coat this; November sucked! It started off good with our trip to Georgia for the Sky to Summit race, but it tanked shortly after that. A couple days after we got back from Georgia, I had a little rupture in my disc. I would try taking it easy for a couple days, and when I ran, I just tried easy, short ones, but it wasn't getting any better. Then Steph crashed and burned on the Dizzy Horse Preview run, and has to have knee surgery, so she will be out for a minimum of 6 months. Then sweet Taeloni passed away, and now all the other stuff that was going wrong seems like nothing compared to that gut punch. I'm not in a good enough place to even blog about that yet. This has been the coldest, snowiest November I can remember since living in Idaho too. Bitter cold! And to end the month off with the icing on the cake, I am super sick. Ugh! I'm not usually a big complainer, but I'm not one bit sad to see November go away!

With that being said, I didn't do too many adventures this month.

Dizzy Horse Preview Run:

I had big hopes for the Dizzy Horse. I was going to try to make it 50 miles, but now I'm just hoping to be able to make it to the starting line and complete a lap. 😓 But we had a preview run of the course. It was a beautiful, cold, morning, and I wasn't doing much running because my back was not doing very good. The gates weren't open, so we had to climb them. I was super careful, and made it over just fine, but Steph fell, and destroyed her knee. I knew right when we helped her up that it wasn't going to be good by the way her body was shaking. Ugh, surgery at the beginning of December, and she'll be out for 6 months. I'm so bummed for her!

Pretty morning at Sandy Downs!

Great turn out for the preview run! 

Sidewinder/Stinking Springs:

I still had hopes that my back would recover, so Mark and I planned a 8-10 mile training run up Sidewinder, down Stinking Springs, and planned to finish off miles on Wolf Flats. As soon as we finished the 5 mile loop, I knew I had to be done. I was getting zingers through my back, and I knew continuing on would not be good.

The trees at the top of Sidewinder were frozen!

It was a beautiful evening!

We saw so many deer coming down Stinking Springs.

Little Moose:

I needed to do a test run with my back. I needed a nice, easy, consistent run, to see if I could at least make it 10-12 miles. We decided to try Little Moose because Mark and Jenn had never been on it before. We got a little more than we bargained for. So much snow! It was crazy! So, there was actually hardly any running, it wasn't easy, and it mostly consisted of trudging. 😂 We made it 7 miles, and it took forever!

Tricia-Jenn-Mark

I totally want to take them back in the spring, so they can see what the trail is usually like.

Snow up to my knees! And we hadn't even hit the bad part yet.

Great view of the Tetons!

Here's a little example of what our run ended up being like. 😂

Rigby Turkey:

I decided after Little Moose that I would be better off just taking some time off from running to give my back a chance to heal. It would be better to start Dizzy Horse a little out of shape, but with a good back, then to keep trying to train, and end up not even being able to start. But then I had the chance to go run in Rigby and make this great Strava turkey. How could I pass that up!

The Rigby Runners

How fun is this?!?

Women's Runs:

We had our annual IFTR Food Drive Run, where everyone can come (not just women). We loaded the back of Sheila (Amanda's car) with food donations, and then did a nice lap around the river. I love this run each year!

Great turn out for the food drive!

Next, we had our annual turkey trot around downtown.

Turkey Trot!

I missed the run where we spelled JOY because I got super sick out of the blue. Blah! Here's hoping that December ends up being a lot better than November was!