Message from Coach Pat
I’ve spent the last twenty years of my professional life coaching track & field, and pretty much every other waking moment adventuring afoot across the public lands of Idaho. Idaho Afoot is the marriage of those two things. On a quiet solo hike in the winter of 2020, I experienced a moment of extraordinary clarity where the gap between these two aspects of my life narrowed and they appeared to me for the first time to be intimately connected. All the traits I was trying to instill in my athletes to help them explore their potential on the track, were the same things I had to ask of myself on a backcountry search and rescue mission in 2008, a four day wilderness trail run in 2012, and a challenging solo mule deer hunt in 2017. Those and many other moments of great challenge I had faced in the mountains suddenly seemed synonymous with my athletes taking on the exhausting multi day effort of a conference championship meet, the nerve racking nature of preliminary rounds, or the pressure of an Olympic Trials final. I’m not sure why for so long I saw these two passions in my life as so separate, but I have known since that day their separation is minuscule and their commonality vast.
Challenge is challenge, and I’ve spent my life taking them on in the mountains and teaching my athletes how to take them on in sport. Whether you want to make an Olympic team, finish a marathon, complete a backpacking trip, summit a mountain, or just get fitter to feel better……..we at Idaho Afoot are here to help you and would be humbled to have that opportunity.