Exploring the Trail

On Saturday I had the brilliant idea to go explore the actual route for the 5k I'm planning on running in June to get a feel for what it's going to be like. After learning the trail was on a portion of the greenbelt, EJ decided to come along with me and skate on her rollerblades while I walked the trail. The trail begins in Eagle, just behind this restaurant.

And most of the trail follows directly along the snake river that cuts directly through parts of Eagle and Boise. It's still winter, but you could already tell how pretty this trail will be in the summertime.

This is EJ's, "mom, c'mon and hurry up, enough pictures already, let's go!" face.

But there's all these really pretty little man-made bodies of water in between all the businesses that are so pretty to look at.

Okay EJ, we're going, but first smile nice for me at the starting line and then we'll get moving...at least I think this is where the starting line is from the web site details about the race. Registration isn't open yet, so I'm not totally sure.

Off we go!

Look at that long stretch of snow covered mountains all across the sky.

And these convenient signs explaining where we are.

Ummm...wait a minute, what's this? Gravel? Uh-oh. Ummm, I didn't realize gravel would be involved. Hmmm...I've never run on gravel before. Okay, good to know. It's a good thing I carried EJ's shoes along with us just in case, since she had to stop and switch here.

And so far the trail was very flat and straight. There were a handful of runners out training, which was very exciting to see!

And how great is it that all this pretty water runs right along the trail?

Okay, then all of a sudden we got very confused. We were walking along so those runners were much too far ahead of us to see which way they went? All of a sudden there was a fork in the trail where it appeared you could travel left or right...which way to go?

We decided to go right and cross the bridge.

On the other side the trail narrowed slightly, but we saw another bench and figured we were going the right direction.

Until we came to this opening where we found the paved trail again??? Ummm...were we supposed to go the other way? Is EJ looking down at the trail we should've taken?

This is the opening we just came out of, but was it the wrong way? We decided we would take the paved trail on the way back to find out. And we did, the paved trail was the WRONG direction...it went on for almost 0.3miles and then ended. Believe it or not we had originally gone the right direction on the gravel path.

Well, now that we had a paved path again, EJ switched back to her rollerblades. Check out those mountains in the background.

Curving up a slight hill and then around the trail toward the left. Can you spot the man on the bike in all black to the left of EJ almost in the center of this photo, up ahead of us on the trail? An I-spy moment, ha!

Another sharp right turn over a bridge and you guessed it...back to gravel.

But first we have to stop and throw in some rocks!

The trail also has some really nice little mile markers. We didn't see all of them, so there were some rather long stretches of the trail where we weren't sure exactly how far we traveled, but it was nice to see some of them. Unfortunately, I forgot to bring my watch that tracks the distance we traveled before heading out of the house.

But in some areas where we couldn't find any mile markers there were some nice natural markers to identify the location, like this giant thick tree.

This woman passed us twice during our walk on the trail! I snapped a photo of her water bottle holder that looks really convenient to remind me to check into that later. I saw a couple of runners with these, so it must be pretty handy...and sure beats having to wait until your run is over to have some water!

A nice straight stretch of the trail. Some areas were straight like this, but most of it was a bit more windy and interesting to look at. (hmmm...are the words windy, as in lots of air on a breezy day, and windy, like something really curvy, spelled the same? Because I mean for this sentence to read how curvy and wIndy the trail was, not that it was really breezy or anything).

And then we found this! All of a sudden just before we had walked 2 miles of the trail, the trail curved down below the road and came up around the other side!

You can't tell from this angle, but it's fairly steep and becomes so narrow it's single file, and full of really large rocks and leaves. This is my, "you seriously expect me to RUN through there?" face.

From the opposite view, now you can really see how steep it became all of a sudden. We were fortunate EJ brought shoes, but they weren't the best for walking and she constantly had little rocks and leaves getting in them.

See how the trail curves around below the road.

And up the other side. It was fun to walk, but I'm not sure how fun it would be during a race? This section is just slightly before the 8.2 mile marker, so it's only about 2miles from where we began on the trail.

Then after some more walking, we discovered where all the really, really, REALLY rich people in Idaho live! I was soooo tempted to walk up to some homes and just ask, "what do you do for a living? Just curious." And I also realized that I personally would never actually want a home this huge...because I could afford a really nice, big (yet smaller than this) home and save so much money to use on other things. Plus I would want way more yard than these homes have so my kids actually have the room to run around. Hmmm...interesting perspective, anyway.

As the trail continued we walked passed at least 4-5 of these mini subdivisions where about 8 or so homes had their own personal lakes, individual beaches, docks, boats, etc.

As we walked on in this section I stopped taking photos, because the homes were so close to the trail and I didn't want to seem really odd or scare any homeowners by standing on the trail outside their homes snapping a camera.

The trail cut across this section of road in the subdivisions and just kept going, and going, and going. We walked through all of these subdivisions until finally the trail went back to more of the gravel roads and trees we had seen before.

There were no mile markers in the sections of the trail in this subdivision, so I can't be entirely sure how far we walked, but we walked for another good stretch after this sub ended before turning around and heading back the way we came. So my closest guess is that we walked about 7 miles that afternoon...and we managed to drive home and arrive just in time because S showed up for my second training session about 20 min. later. (at which point I started to doubt how great of an idea it really was to go on a 7 mile walk just prior to my torture, I mean, training, session?).

While I'm still a little unsure exactly where the 5k will start and stop, now I have a much better idea of what the race route will be like (and can prepare better for running on gravel) and now I can plan to incorporate some of my runs on the actual trail. Plus having such a clear visual makes me even more excited about actually running in my very first race! I can't wait!