Gifted a warm spring day, runners relish ‘epic sunshine’ on the Race to Robie Creek
A few years can make a lot of difference.
In 2020, it was canceled. In 2021, it was virtual. In 2022 it was pouring rain at the finish line, and slushy on the way down.
This year, organizers watched as record snowfall and cold weather greeted Boiseans this month, with an inch of snow falling as recently as Thursday morning.
Founded in 1975, the Race to Robie Creek is a grueling half-marathon, taking runners more than 2,000 feet up Shaw Mountain Road to the summit, then back down for the last few miles to the Robie Creek Campground, along Highway 21 in Boise County.
As race day approached, people were asking if it might get canceled again.
“No,” Michael Devitt, the race director, told the Idaho Statesman on Saturday morning. “I don’t care how you get to the other side, but we’re not canceling it so you can have an easy day,” he joked.
Despite the foreboding weather earlier this month, this year’s race took off without a hitch on a bright Saturday in April, in the same place, at the time and on the same weekend as every other year it’s happened: Fort Boise Park, the third Saturday of the month, at high noon.
“It was going to be epic one way or the other, and now it’s just epic sunshine,” Devitt said.
It is not your typical road race. Every year has a theme, this year’s being “Stayin’ Alive.” People take it quite seriously. There were more than a few sequined shirts and dresses.
In place of last year’s rain jackets and layers, there were tank tops and shorts.
But even with the warmer weather, there was no shortage of adverse conditions on race day. The backside of Shaw Mountain had six inches of icy slush for racers to contend with over a two-mile stretch that doesn’t get much sun.
“I’m hoping that I stay alive,” Terry Scraggins said shortly before the race began. He ran it in 2019, before the race took its COVID-19 hiatus. He said he runs to be healthier, and as a form of self-care.
There was a tattoo booth near the starting point, so many racers had stamped their legs and arms with “Stayin’ Alive,” the silhouette of a disco dancer, or a tuxedoed frog.
Ali Brown and Brandi Megis have been best friends since fourth grade and have run the race together for a decade.
Brown said running on the trails in the Boise Foothills is a way of greeting spring.
“As you run in the trails up there, you start to see spring happening, the turn from brown to green,” she said. The creeks begin to fill up with spring runoff. She’d brought her Yaktrax to help get through the slush.
Dustin Bryant, of Boise, said he hoped that the people in front of him would help break a trail through the snow. He’s run Robie four times already, and brought along a friend for this year’s race. Both wore sequined shirts: one pink, one rainbow.
Asked if he liked running such races, Bryant said: “Like? No, that wouldn’t be the word. It’s just sort of the goal.”
He said he likes the experience, despite how challenging it is, and that signing up for a race helps him keep his training on track.
Bryant’s friend, Jake Coddington, said he’s never run more than three or four miles before. More than 900 of the more than 2,000 people who signed up for this year’s race had never run it before, Devitt said.
Along with a sequined shirt, Coddington wore polyester bell-bottomed pants.
“I might sweat, or it might just be nice,” he said.
The band Bob’s Your Uncle played “Your Mama Don’t Dance” in the background.
Along with “Stayin’ Alive,” the race organizers wanted to emphasize protecting Earth, the Foothills and mental health as part of this year’s theme, Devitt said.
A minister, Jenny Hirst of Collister United Methodist Church, gave a lighthearted and musical benediction at the race’s start, alongside dancers in sequined dresses.
Hirst warned runners to not get lost before saying “Go in peace” to set them off.
“The last three years have just been bad,” Devitt said, referring to the pandemic and related challenges. “It feels good to kind of just be back where it’s just us, them and the mountain.”
Devitt’s mother, Carolyn Devitt, died at 83 last May. She ran the race 15 times during her life, and her son scattered her ashes up in the mountains along the course.
“That was the one place she wanted them spread,” he said.
‘The more gnarly, the better’
After running more than 13 miles, one runner crossed the finish line with a cartwheel. Another bowed.
Logan Rees took first place on Saturday, finishing the race in 1:16:40, according to the trackers, Competitive Timing.
The 26-year-old is from Crail, Scotland, and came to Idaho to run track at Boise State University.
He’s never run Robie before, but said he lives “about 100 meters” from the start line.
He said he’s less familiar with trail running than running on a track, and so he wanted to get a large lead at the start.
He said he was “running scared” for most of the descent, feeling hot in the sun and worried someone would pass him. He said the race was “phenomenally well-organized.”
Samantha Lewis, of Moscow, was the first woman to finish, clocking in at 1:31:55. She’s a Ph.D. student at the University of Idaho, where she studies the philosophy of human movement and sports ethics.
She also coaches cross country, and prefers running on trails and in mountains.
“The more gnarly, the better,” she said. She said not every day running on steep hills is fun, but that overall its worth it.
“The biggest thing that I’m trying to embrace is this should be a lot of fun,” she said.
This story was originally published April 15, 2023 at 5:36 PM.
