June Running

June brought beautiful wildflowers, the Trailblazer Challenge, a race, and fun adventures! 

Women's Runs:

Our first Women's run of the month was Grandpa Henry's Taters for a Lost Souls route. It's always a great time with the ladies!

I love Indian paintbrush!

The foothills have been so green from all the rain.

We had to cancel one of the runs this month due to a big storm that came through. 

Our final Women's Run of June, was up Sidewinder to celebrate the 5 year anniversary of the Women's Runs. I can't believe it's been 5 years! We've had so many fun times over the 5 years, it definitely deserved a celebration. We all dressed up (since we seem to do that a lot on our runs 😂), hooked balloons to ourselves, and headed up Sidewinder. It was so funny seeing a line of dressed up ladies, running up the trail with balloons flying behind us. When we got back to the cars, we stayed until dark eating pie, chips and dip, fruit, and other goodies. Amanda even had a fun drawing. The women's runs are one of the best things that have happened in our running community. We have so much fun together, and I've made so many great friends from these runs.

5 year celebration!

😂😂😂

There's nothing better than a hot dog standing at the top of a mountain holding a balloon. 😂

So grateful Amanda started this group!

We had a beautiful evening!

Lots of goodies to help us celebrate.

Trail of Bones-Ghost in the Graveyard-Kepp's Ridge:

The Lost Souls Challenge is underway again! Mark and I only signed up for the Trailblazer this year. You just have to complete 10 routes to finish. We just have too much other stuff going on in life right now, and something had to take a back seat.

I was able to attend the kick off run, and I busted out 3 routes on the first day of the challenge. We did Trail of Bones, then a fun new one called Ghost in the Graveyard, and finished it off with Kepp's Ridge for a 9 mile morning. The wildflowers were insane up there!

The group coming up Trail of Bones.

So many flowers!

They covered the hillsides!

Love these crazy people!

Going through Ghost in the Graveyard.

Climbing up the crack!

Big Elk-Bruno:

Mark was in AZ, so I went with a group and did Big Elk and Bruno. It was another two routes, and a gorgeous 17 mile day. Sometimes runs just hit a little different, and this was that kind of run for me. Everything was so green, the flowers were crazy, the weather perfect for running, I felt great, and the whole day I just had an overwhelming feeling of being so grateful to be out there. I can't even really explain it. My soul was filled.

Big Elk

I do this trail every year in the spring, and I've never seen it this green before.

The flowers were spectacular.

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Climbing up Bruno was amazing. The fog over the lake was so cool!

I'm pretty sure I could run in the mountains all day every day and never get tired of it.

😍😍😍

Old Meadow-Meadow to Skelly:

A group of us did an early morning run to get a couple more routes. I like to do Old Meadow with people, and early in the season, because I'm always worried about snakes. It was a beautiful 10.5 mile morning! Even though we got sick of so much snow this past winter, it sure made for a gorgeous spring.

Made it to the water on Old Meadow.

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This was Meadow to Skelly, and I really liked it. It's a new route Dan added this year.

Upper Palisades Lake:

I haven't been to the upper lake since last October. Man I missed it! Mark and I started our tapering, for a race coming up, so we needed an easy 12 miles. That put us too close to the lake to not make it, so we ended up with 13.5, and I loved it all!

The creek was raging! The waterfall looked great.

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The lower lake

I should add up the amount of selfies we have at this lake. 😁

We saw a moose!

The lake looks so much fuller than the past couple years. Yay for a snowy winter.

I love this picture of Ashley and Tessa!

My favorite adventure guy!

Glen's Grunt to Hidden Vista:

The women's run got canceled because of a storm, so Mark and I decided to go run a route in Kelly Canyon. It was a short route, and we made it to the half way point before the rain started. We got quite wet, but it was the perfect kind of running rain. No wind, and a nice temperature. We loved it!

Hidden Vista

Kelly Mountain Peak:

The next day was stormy too, but we decided to test our luck again. Same scenario, we made it to the turn around point and then the rain started. The clouds were gorgeous, and the sun kept poking through. I kept wondering where the rainbow was, and then wham-o! We looked up to the most gorgeous, full rainbow I've ever seen. The pictures don't do it justice at all. Then it became a double rainbow. It just kept getting better and better. It was seriously the coolest run ever! This was also my 10th route, so I made Trailblazer status less than 2 weeks into the challenge.

I love when the clouds have a silver lining.

Look at that majestic cow!

We made it to the top of Kelly Mountain Peak.

💖💖💖

We could see the start and finish of the rainbow.

It was so bright!

I didn't know Mark was filming this, but I love it!

Buckskin/Rolly Polly:

I did Buckskin Morgan twice. Once with Joyce, and then I hiked it with a group of ladies from church.

Ashton: Warm Springs:

They were having a super bloom up in Ashton, so we went up there to run with Joyce for our final long run before our race. We missed the peak of the flowers by a week, but they were still amazing. Joyce took us on a fun run by Warm Springs. We haven't done a ton of running in Ashton, and it was nice to have a tour guide to get us on some new trails. So pretty up there!

I love the white ones!

Warm Springs

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Nothing lifts a spirit quite like fields and fields full of flowers.

Moonlight on Mt. Ascension:

It was finally race time, and it was quite an adventure! We are still working on doing races in other states, so for Montana we picked Moonlight on Mt. Ascension. It's a 12 hour night race. You do as many figure 8 loops as you can in that 12 hours. There is a 7.5 mile loop that climbs Mt. Ascension, and then a 4 mile loop that completes the figure 8. We started at 8:00PM, and ended at 8:00AM. We drove to Helena on Friday, and got to the start area a few hours early. A massive storm rolled through with torrential rain, and lots of thunder and lightening. We were sitting in Mark's truck thinking this was going to be a heck of a long night. 😳 I like running in the rain, but not this kind, and not for 12 hours! At 7:50 we stood in the rain for the pre race meeting, and it seemed like it was lightening up a little bit. We started the first loop, and ran the first couple miles in a pleasant light rain, and then after that it cleared up, and we had a perfect night! Mark and I had a goal to complete 4 figure 8 loops in the 12 hours. Our strategy was to bust the first loop out pretty fast (11.5 miles). We knew our climbing legs would get tired after that, so we wanted to give ourselves a good buffer. We kicked butt on the first loop. We were up with the front runners. We actually did better than them on the climb, but they pulled away a little on the long downhill. We were able to get through most of the first loop while it was still light, and the trail was beautiful. I was feeling fantastic! We still pushed hard on the second loop, and increased our buffer a little bit more. We were losing more time than we wanted at the aid stations, because we didn't have a crew, but the stuff we were doing was necessary (going to the bathroom, switching out headlamps, eating, drinking, body glide, etc.). The third loop was the hardest for both of us. We had been awake for a long time, our climbing legs were feeling it by this point, and both of us started having knee pain. We both do a really good job of staying upbeat and positive during stuff like this. We rallied again on our fourth and final loop. I'm sure it's because we knew it was our final lap, the sun was going to be coming up, and just a short ways into it, we realized we were going to finish in plenty of time, so the pressure was gone.

We ended up 4th and 5th overall, and I was the first female.

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Getting ready to start in the rain.

Climbing up Mt. Ascension.

Our first time up. That's Helena behind us.

Helena in the middle of the night.

I love running at night.

Our final time up Mt. Ascension, and the sun was coming up!

Done, and we had plenty of time to spare.

We all finished strong, and were looking forward to our pancake breakfast.

Mark fell on the final loop. I just told him to rub some dirt on it. 😂

We loved the race, and highly recommend it. The area is gorgeous!

Maw Maw Clowards: Coronation Run

We took a few days off to recover, and hope my knee pain went away, but we wanted to make sure we went to the Lost Souls coronation run. Carney finished all 50 routes crazy fast, and even had a 108k race he did in that short time. Total beast! His coronation run was at Maw Maw Clowards, and was a great morning with awesome people.

King Carney

The crew celebrating the king.

This is always a fun water crossing.

😍😍😍

It was a great month of running. It was so nice to make it through a training cycle with no illness or injury. I haven't run a race I felt trained for since last November. I finally feel like I'm getting my body back to where it needs to be after back issues, illness, a stress fracture, etc.