The following article is the first in our year-long series of articles supporting ATRA’s 2024 theme: Better Together and this installment featuring Boise Betties was written by trail runner Sarah Barber.
The stage is set
It’s 4:48 am on Tuesday, and my wrist is vibrating. Suunto has never failed to wake me up when I’ve given it the order. It could be any Tuesday—every Tuesday, in fact—but this one is memorable for its drizzly darkness in early November, somewhere between autumn and winter. The promise of snow lingers in the mist, but I’m grateful that there won’t be icy surfaces to threaten my objective: run ten miles with the middle seven at tempo. It’s a tall order for a mid-week workout, but I—along with six of my teammates—am deep into training for the California International Marathon which is only a month away.
For non-runners, the idea of coaxing one’s body into racing 26.2 miles on foot is beyond ridiculous. But for those of us who’ve chosen this path, it’s more than normal. It’s a lifestyle, an unquestioned commitment, and might even become a habit. We spend days, weeks, and months urging our tissues to adapt, occasionally flirting with injury and sometimes questioning our sanity. This commitment is plenty hard all by itself, so why make training even more challenging by starting before five-thirty in the morning?
Group effect
So we can all do the workout together! Same group, same conditions. It’s the one time none of us has a competing interest. And the day is fresh—there’s nothing in the way of bringing all we’ve got (or maybe not) on this particular day. If it means waking up long before sunrise on Tuesday, it certainly won’t make the workout any easier, but I’m certain it will make it better.
The “group effect” in exercise has been well documented since the early 90s, and it’s no joke. As the theory goes, group dynamics often have a huge impact on athletic performance, thanks to the social support, mutual encouragement, accountability, and shared motivation or goals. From jazz band to singing choir to military bootcamp, outcomes are better with a team.
I refer to the Boise Betties not as my “group,” but as my tribe. At 47 years, I’m the oldest among the consistent attendees, but once in a while a fifty-something gal shows up. Age doesn’t matter so much in this crowd, though, because our shared life experience is more important. Sure, I might get blank looks if I reference pop culture from the 1980s (they never watched MacGyver or Miami Vice), but my tribe certainly has opinions about whether I should try Botox or stop coloring my gray hair.
Shared goals
A year ago, our shared goals and our mutual zest for exploring cool places took us to the USTAF Club XC National Championships in Golden Gate Park—San Francisco! Any coach would have recommended we stay off our feet the day before the race, but our hotel at Fisherman’s Wharf was within walking distance to Chinatown, Coit Tower, Little Italy, and Lombard Street. “Save your legs” ethic be damned: we each logged close to 30,000 steps and finished it off with a stop for chocolate at Ghiradelli Square. We had a blast, and we had no regrets, even the next day when it came time to race.
Makeshift tarp designed by the Boise Betties.
As fate would have it, the real story was not the race but rather the atmospheric river that led to epic conditions. Our cleverly erected shelter, consisting of a tarp flung over a branch and anchored with rope, didn’t stand a chance against the gale force wind and torrential rainfall.
Those of us in the masters race were soaking wet before we even started, and we finished with muddy rivulets streaming down our legs. We returned to the warmup area to find emergency vehicles and a giant uprooted tree pinning our gear bags beneath our flattened makeshift shelter. Meanwhile, my teammates in the open event got to deal with a race start time that was delayed and then delayed again while they huddled under an overhang in the park.
They finally competed in “cross country” on a modified course: laps around a gravel oval track. Needless to say, it was a character-building experience that we felt fit the category of “fun adventure”—because we were in it together. As a solo experience, I think it would have been disappointing at best.
Boise Betties getting a bit muddy.
Finding joy
More recently, shared aspirations of PRs, BQs, and OTQs found the same key players training together for the California International Marathon. Drawn by rumors of a fast course, direct flights from Boise, and historically good weather, we managed to rope in the trail runners of the group to see whether they could learn to love pavement—26.2 miles of it. While race outcomes are always varied, each of us would tell you that we found immense joy in the process that eventually got us to the start line of CIM.
Our weeks of preparation forged bonds with sweat, tears, and laughter baked in. The final icing on the cake was randomly catching a coach bus with a built-in mobile toilet to ferry us to the staring line of the race; we were surrounded by yellow school buses full of other race participants who would have to line up for Porta-Potties when they got to the sendoff in Folsom. This unbelievable stroke of good luck seemed to exemplify the charmed existence of the Boise Betties.
Better together
Apart from shared goals, we truly share our lives. Conversation topics during easy miles range from relationship drama to career crossroads, but when things really get heavy, the support network is unshakeable. In life, as in sport, there’s no one right answer, and sometimes your own sense of things is at odds with the coach or your teammates, but that’s where trusting each other comes in.
Over the years we’ve navigated turbulent divorces, terminal diagnoses, and the tragic loss of a child. These things never get easier, and neither do VO2 max intervals, but they’re better with each other than they could ever be alone—we’re better together.
