I’m back! Here’s my instagram post from last Wednesday night when I finished the Boise Trails Challenge.
BTC done and dusted! I made it on all 177.25 BTC trail miles in seven days. Feeling very grateful that my body is still holding it together, and inspired by the epic community I've encountered on the trails this week!
*My Garmin reads 222.8 miles and 36,045 ft of vert, for the record.*
Since then I’ve fueled like crazy (the first few days were INSANE in terms of frequency of hunger signals and volumes of food consumed), reset some of my spaces (like the minivan, for example), done all of my laundry, taken a good number of epsom salt baths, and spent a lot of time with my feet up.
My feet are definitely the part of my body requiring the most TLC; too hard to say for sure just yet, but it looks like I may loose my right big toenail. I’ve been choosing my footwear carefully, and keeping the area as cleaned up as I can while I let it heal. The blisters on my heels seem to be resolved, and my energy levels seem relatively back to normal. Getting good sleep has been so instrumental in that return.
As of this posting, there are nine women so far to have finished the BTC on foot. The woman in tenth place on the leaderboard is 93.77% complete.
I was the fourth woman, and fifth overall on-foot participant to complete all 177 required Boise Trails Challenge miles.
The BTC, though, wasn’t created as a runner and hiker challenge—it was made by and for mountain bikers. So when you’re really talking about overall results, I was 39th.
Which is kind of insane when you stop to think about it. I’m in the top 40 of Boise Trails Challenge participants, both men and women—inclusive of mountain bikers, runners, and hikers.
I’m not the fastest trail runner out there, so my insane finish wasn’t about raw speed as much as it was about goal setting, planning, logistics, execution, and endurance. I also had support. I’ll be unpacking these aspects of my Boise Trails Challenge experience here on this substack in publications to come—I have so much yet to process.
And to be clear, not all of the people who sign up for the BTC are trying to finish it as fast as they can. Many don’t finish at all; some simply make their goal to complete a higher percentage of the trails than they did the previous year. My personal goal was not to get as high in the rankings as I possibly could—it was to finish by my birthday, June 28th. This goal was both personally challenging and compatible with my future goal to complete a tough 100 miler this September.
And I did it! What a fantastic way to mark my 47th year.
Here I am celebrating both my BTC accomplishment *and* my birthday with my family at Island Sushi & Ramen. Delicious and nourishing.
I’ve already made a list of encounters and experiences from my week that I don’t want to forget. As I work through those in writing over the weeks to come, both as a reflective practice and as a means of cementing and sharing many of my take-aways, thank you for coming along.
May my journey inspire your journey—go get those goals, whatever they may be!
Wow, that is incredible!! I mean- unbelievable! Well done Kim!! I’m amazed!