Runners and cyclists have seen their favorite local races cancelled this year, such as the Race to Robie Creek, the Famous Potato and the Sawtooth Relays, to name a few.
Others, though, have been reimagined as virtual events.
The state’s largest running event is St. Luke’s FitOne. Thousands of runners line up in front of the Capitol each Fall. But that’s not possible this year.
“We first started talking about this in March,” said executive director Eric Stride. “Pretty quickly on, we realized, it was going to be virtual.”
He said racers will use a GPS app to track them on a prescribed course or one of their own. “You log in and run your course anywhere,” said Stride, “which is the course you select out your front door.“
But some athletic events were ahead of the curve, like the Boise Trails Challenge, now in its third year. It’s always been virtual and open to mountain bikers and runners, says co-founder Kirk Cheney.
“It’s an event where you have a month to try to complete most of the trails in the Boise area,” explained Cheney. “So it turns out to be about 250 miles that most people do and about 40,000 feet of climbing.”
Registrations doubled this year, with around 1,200 paying the $45 fee, even though only about a third will finish the challenge. “But even though it’s virtual,” said Cheney, “it unifies people a lot. People meet a lot of friends through this thing, because they’re out on the trails a lot more than usual and see other people doing it.”
The Boise Trails Challenge wraps up its monthlong event on July 20, while St. Luke’s FitOne kicks off its week of racing on September 18.
Find Tom Michael on Twitter @Tom2Michael
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