Varvel Family: May Running

It's been a very long winter, and I feel like spring finally showed up in May! Hallelujah! We had some fantastic run this month!

Women's Runs:

Trail Hollow:

We had a big group and beautiful weather on Trail Hollow. We're finally wearing shorts and t-shirts.

Trail Hollow

Blacktail:

We had been seeing all the pictures of the giant snow banks on the way down to the reservoir. We decided to do it as a women's run. The snow had melted a lot by the time we went, but it was still pretty impressive.

Blacktail

It took them a long time to plow this area. the roads were closed for a really long time!

This is how tall the snow was after a lot of it had melted.

Me and Georgina

Blacktail Reservoir

We had a pretty sunset that night.

Cress Creek:

We had a nice run on the Cress Creek Canal, and around the Cress Creek Nature Trail. Another beautiful night.

Cress Creek area.

The canal path.

Looking down at the river, from a Cress Creek lookout.

Bigalow's Beast/Little Kellys:

I was so excited for all the ladies to experience Bigalows. We had a perfect night! Everything was so green, the flowers were covering the hillsides, and the weather was perfect. Everyone loved it! A few of the ladies have been doing it regularly now.

Bigalows

It's yellow flower season, and I couldn't be more excited about it! There will be a yellow flower picture overload for the next month.

The Cairn at the top of the mountain.

😍😍😍

So pretty.

There was an amazing sunset on the river on my drive home.

Cress Creek Area:

Joyce got back from her vacation, and we had a lot of catching up to do, so we did an easy run around the Cress Creek area.

Stack Rock & Mr. Big:

We needed to squeeze in a long run while we were in Boise for Nora'a birthday and Mason's graduation, so we decided to do Stack Rock. I loved this trail last time I did it, so I wanted Mark to see it. We got a later start than we were planning on, so we knew we would have to go fast in order to get all of our miles in before dark. It started out great, and then we got into a lot more snow than we bargained for. That slowed us down a ton. We ran until a little bit after dark, but we didn't have headlamps, so we had to call it quits 4 miles short of our goal. We went 16 miles, and we needed 20.

It's such a pretty area.

There's part of stack rock. We didn't have time to explore it.

This slowed us down a lot! There was so much of it. It seemed like it was on all the downhills that would have been fun to run.

This was quite fresh, so that made us a bit nervous. I had bear spray, but Mark didn't. We just kept our eyes peeled, and tried to hurry out of that area before it got dark.

The city lights were starting to glow down in Boise.

The Butte & Sidewinder:

I had a good day of climbing. I did 5 miles on the Butte in the morning with Joyce, and then another 6 miles on Sidewinder in the evening with a small group.

The Butte

Sidewinder
Ashley-Sterling-Mark-Tricia-Ashlee

The Henry & Taylors:

Training has been going really good. I've been taking the 'less is more' approach, and my body seems to be responding really well to it. I put in so many miles the past 3-4 years, and I've taken a beating. Lots of illness and injuries. I decided to run a little less, but make it count when I do run. I've been feeling so good. It feels great to be able to train for a race again, and not just go into it hoping to survive. This was a 22 miler in the Henry and Taylor area. Despite not being a super exciting route for that far, I felt fantastic.

We started with this group, and picked up Carney and Abbey along the way.
It was so good to have Steph bak out there with us.

A rainbow! 🌈

The foothills are getting really green.

We made it to the gate!

Bigalow's Beast & Little Kellys:

It was a Tuesday hill day, so we decided to climb Bigalow's, and see how fast we could make it up. I made it up in 21 miles exactly, and it was tough! I feel really good about that. We also decided to do some exploring on the way down, and found a really cool trail that connects to Little Kellys. We made a great loop!

The Butte:

Mark and I did an 8 miler on the Butte, and we both got our fastest times climbing up! Whahooo, the climbing legs are back!

The Butte is starting to bloom!

Just climbing around a volcano.

The paintbrush is starting to come out.

😍😍😍

Chinese Peak/Wiggle Worm:

We headed to Chinese Peak in Pocatello for a 15 miler. We had never run in this area before, and it was a way bigger climb than we were expecting. We also got to do the Wiggle Worm trail we had heard so much about. It was really fun, but it's got nothing on Sidewinder. 😁 It got really hot, which none of us are used to yet, so good het training as well.

Starting the never ending climb.

Still climbing. I thought that was the top that you can see in this picture, but it was just a false summit. 😐

It was so steep!

A little bit of down, just to go back up again.

We made it! Now for some fun downhill!

😍😍😍

Little Moose:

Joyce and I did a 9 miler on Little Moose. I try to do all the foothill routes in the spring when they are green and pretty, and filled with flowers. I don't go in the summer, because they get dry and hot, and the rattlesnakes come out to play.

Cute Joyce!

Bikini Top:

This was the peak run of our training. We did a 25 miler. That's the farthest we'll go for this training cycle. We have a 12 hour night race in Montana in a few weeks. We call this the Bikini Top because that's what our Strava maps looks like when we're done. It was a beautiful run!

The sunrise right before we started.

Fun crew!

I love this picture!

We met up with our other running friends at the Trail of Bones. They were just finishing their run, as we were heading up.

The flowers were nuts!

😂😂😂

Whole hillsides were covered!

💖💖💖

Kepp's Ridge

Mark and Carney

Lost Souls Kickoff: Trail Hollow

Dan had a kickoff run for the 2023 Lost Souls. Mark and I aren't doing it this year. We decided to only sign up for the free Trailblaer version. We only have to get 10 routes, and I'll have that in the first few weeks. I just get too hyper focused on it and I have too much other stuff going on this summer.

It was a great turn out. This isn't even everyone who came; just those that happened to be right there when the picture was taken.

Stout Mountain:

We left the kickoff run early, and headed to the mountains to hike Stout Mountain. This was a new one for all of us, so I was really excited. It was awesome! It was 3 miles to the top with 3000 feet of elevation gain. It was a good climb! There were all kinds of wildflowers on the way up, so that was great. Then the views from the top were the icing on the cake. So pretty!

Get ready for a wildflower picture overload!