More details to come! Please save the date for a special edition of Tuesday Track. Please plan to attend Tuesday October 30th for a fundraiser to support Girls on the Run of the Treasure Valley. The BAR is hoping to provide funds towards sponsoring local girls. All donations will go towards assisting those who need financial assistance to join this program. ~ 58% of the girls received some level of scholarship last year.
There will be a Halloween costume contest, relays, and other various fun races. Please feel free to bring a friend. Suggested $20 donation but all are welcome!
We will also be accepting youth sized running socks and shelf stable healthy snacks such as single serve applesauce cups and Kind bars.
Running has been a big part of Duane Evan’s life from childhood to retirement. It has contributed to his health, well-being, and most significant relationships. Out of all these benefits, running has taught Duane the value of persistence.
“I remember as a kid running because walking was too slow.” Growing up in The Dalles, Oregon, cherry orchards lay on the mile long path between Duane and his friend’s home. He started walking and realized it was taking forever. “So, I ran.”
Duane running the 2018 Boston Marathon.
There were not a lot of organized sports for kids living outside of town. That left running and hiking in the hills. “Running was something that we just ended up doing…Mom would ring the cowbell and we had to be home by the second bell.” Climbing around up in the hills behind the house meant that when the bell rang “we had to run!”
Duane runs now more for well-being and the relationships he creates in running. “I feel a lot better when I run than when I don’t.” He misses a couple of days of running and knows he needs to get out there to feel right again. Running also makes relationships more significant. “You can’t run with someone very long without getting to know them. All pretense is gone…you end up being who you are.”
While running in high school cross country Duane encountered a major hurdle to running: injuries. During his senior year he developed micro tears in the meniscus of his knee. This injury stopped his running and he was not able to compete in college. He was not sure he would ever be able to run.
Eventually, symptoms cleared and he started running socially and considered competing his senior year of college. He kept running. “I ran into my late thirties and that is when I set all of my PRs (personal records).” Then those micro tears emerged again in his forties and stopped him. He did not run from 1999-2012.
Then Duane ran into an old training partner and got inspired to run again. Now he was a bit older and overweight. On this journey back into running Duane developed injury after injury. Instead of just stopping he discovered the key to overcoming injuries: “Persistence, persistence, persistence…keeping after it. Everyday I am going to do something…I am going to ride a bike, walk, do what I can do. I gradually came back.”
Of the process Duane says, “It was so hard…Now I am 45 pounds lighter and feel a ton better than I did about six years ago.” Persistence was and is the key.
Duane has also learned to appreciate being able to run. He reflects on running and thinks, “I better enjoy this because it can get taken away from you pretty quickly.” He celebrated this ability by running in the Boston Marathon last April. To say the weather conditions were not ideal would be an understatement: cold rain and a fierce headwind tested Duane’s enjoyment. He missed his goal time by just ten minutes but was able to qualify for next year’s marathon, which he will be running.
Duane has pursued running with persistence and the key has been “learning patience with injury and how to really keep after it and persevere to figure out what you can do” to get back to running. “I can’t run the way I want to run. I can’t run where or how I want to run. But maybe I can cycle a day or two” or run on a treadmill or elliptical. Like Duane’s former running partner, he certainly inspires Boise Area Runners to keep after it and persist!
Jessica Savre started running only a year and a half ago at the age of 43, yet it has changed her life in so many ways. In her own words, “It has opened up a new part of my life.” Through running Jessica has discovered new levels of physical, emotional, and mental well-being.
It all started in August of 2016 while vacationing in Minnesota. She was visiting her mother-in-law who was training for a half marathon. After walking with her during that time Jessica felt inspired to add walking to her lunch routine at work. “After a couple of months it became boring and I wanted to go further so that meant go faster. I had admired runners and how easy they made it look, so I wanted to try.” She added little run segments into the walks. “Over time it became easier, and I liked how much better it made me feel emotionally and physically.” She remembers well the first day that she ran an entire mile without stopping. She can easily run five miles on that same lunch hour now.
Jessica with Bob – a fellow Boise Area Runner.
Two months after she started running that Fall, she looked for others to run with and found the Boise Area Runners (the BAR). “My first BAR run was a Whole Foods evening run of three and half miles. I ran with Vickie Stieha, and I felt so unqualified to run with her. I had lung burn, an awful side ache, but Vickie was so welcoming and patient.” Jessica kept coming each week and then on her third BAR run she ran with Bob Mueller. “We ran ten miles and I was so proud, my longest distance yet! He was so kind and encouraging in helping me with my side ache issue by using the run seven minute/walk one minute method.”
Bob and Jessica have been training together ever since and Bob inspired her to race the Famous Potato Half Marathon and then the City of Trees Marathon within only twelve months of starting running. She has since run several half marathons, including Race to Robie Creek, and is training for the Seattle Rock and Roll Marathon in June. “Since running and joining the BAR, I have learned no distance is impossible. I now love long distance running and the feeling of accomplishment it gives me.”
When Jessica first started running and joined the BAR she was dealing with a lot of stress, depression, and anxiety. “I was looking for ways to alleviate that in my life and running was the answer.” She has found BAR members to be so encouraging and the social get togethers after the runs enjoyable. “My favorite runs are the Saturday morning long runs when I can get together with BAR friends and put in the miles.”
All smiles at the end of successful run.
Jessica has learned to cope with stress through running. She can have stress at work and feel like she should work through lunch to solve it. Instead, she goes for a run and comes back and sees her way through the problem. “If I have a bad day now, I go for a run.” When her father passed away unexpectedly in March of 2017, she discovered that “time out running helped me work through my grief and anger.” She wishes that she had found this tool much earlier in her life.
In her own words: “Running with the BAR has been a life changer for me, in some ways a life saver actually. I feel like a different person since I joined. It has helped me be a happier person, deal with my social anxiety by getting out and meeting new people, doing new things like track and hills. I now realize that I love distance running.”
For Jessica the key factor is running with friends. “It makes all the difference, as we mentally hold each other up as the miles get tougher.”
Running with friends can make a long run feel surprisingly short.
Justin has run for many years and, like many runners, has found a great deal of enjoyment from it. As we visited it became clear to me that, from his first run through today, many of his most memorable and peak runs have involved friends.
Justin running the Shamrock Shuffle in 2015
Justin started running his senior year in high school. He had a friend on the cross country team who kept saying, “You should come out and run!”
“Finally, my senior year he got to me, and I decided to do it.” Justin was so excited when he ran his first whole mile without stopping that he told his friend, “Dude! I ran a mile!” His friend’s response: “Okay, now do two more.” And Justin did just that. He was fast enough to be on the varsity team and saw big improvement that year. “It seemed like in every race I would go a minute faster.” That pestering friend introduced Justin to the joy of tasting the fruits of consistent training.
Once in college, Justin fell off of running and didn’t start again until he graduated and went into graduate school. Running on his own in Michigan winters he didn’t have or know about technical clothing. “I was that guy out there wearing sweatpants and a hoodie.” He was running enough to be in shape to run an “accidental” half-marathon though. “I took an ATV trail and ran to the end and back.” When he looked at the map later he realized he had basically run to the next town and had run around 14 miles without water or gels. “It was a mistake…It was a good run. I look back on that run very fondly.” He eventually fell off running until he moved to Boise to take a job after earning his graduate degree.
New to the area, Justin realized he needed to meet some people and make some friends. A friend recommended meetup.com and that is where he discovered the Boise Area Runners and thought, “I always wanted to get back into running.” He went to his first run and met John Stieha. They ran together about a mile and a half out and back. “I was dying the whole time,” Justin recalls. “John stuck with me and I was hooked.” That was back in 2013 and Justin has been running with the BAR ever since as well as volunteering as the group’s treasurer.
Justin celebrating after the Run 4 Luv with his pacer and fellow Boise Area Runner – Samantha Allen.
It was here in Boise that Justin got back into racing for the first time since high school. One of his most memorable races was the Run4Luv half marathon a couple of years ago. “I ran that race with Samantha Allen. I hadn’t planned on getting a PR (personal record) that day. I was just out to do it.” Sam had been running a larger training run and included the half marathon as part of her training. She had already run seven miles. “She paced me for that race. I was so dead, but she had so much good encouragement throughout the whole thing…I just remember crossing that finish line and being like, ‘I did it!’” Justin enjoyed setting that personal record and rediscovering the power a positive friend can have on running performance.
Celebrating at the finish line of the Ragnar Relay Wasatch Back event in 2014.
Relay races have also provided Justin with some incredible memories. The Wasatch Back Relay (in the Ragnar Series) stands out in particular. “Seeing everybody running. We had two teams and we were leapfrogging the other van and they were leapfrogging us. It was pretty fun…I think there is something special about being crammed in a van with five other people for a day and a half…Everybody just totally reeks at the end…and nobody cares.” Justin also enjoyed participating in the Ragnar Trail Series at Zions in Southern Utah. There runners stay at a base camp and run different trail routes. “Between your runs there is so much stuff you can do.” The Sawtooth relay is also a favorite. Anytime friends and running get together, Justin is eager to participate.
At the moment Justin is facing the bane of all runners: running injury. “It really takes a lot of wind out of your sails.” The challenge of this ankle injury keeps him from planning things out because he doesn’t know if he will be able to do it. In spite of this, he keeps active with climbing and stays connected with the BAR so he will be able to create more memories and set new PR’s running with friends.
