I've been putting this off for a few weeks now ... and I'm not even quite sure why. It definitely wasn't my worst race ever, nor was it anywhere even close.
Soooo ... I'm just going to do this in marginal bulletpoint form and get it over with.
- I broke the cardinal rule of racing and tried something new on race day. The outside of my right knee has been bugging me on runs lately ... for anything over two miles. I thought it might be my shoes ... I'd changed my stride to more of a midfoot than a heel-toe strike and my shoes had been getting pretty old, so I went for it. I also went with the same brand/style as my old shoes; just the updated version (mizuno wave alchemy 8s to the 9s).
Still didn't help.
- We got to Boulder very early, parked near the finish (genius), made our way over to the start ... and still missed our wave due to the stupid ass-long FedEx Mobile Locker line (paid $1 to have our stuff waiting for us at the end. nice to not have to run with keys). Luckily it wasn't a problem.
- I lost Brandon early into mile one, for, as he said, he had to pee due to skipping the port-o-potties for round two. First mile was just under a 10:40 pace ... which was fine by me.
- Either in the 2nd K or the 2nd mile (i forget which), my knee started bugging me anyway. Damnit.
- I didn't run with my camera this race. I regretted it almost immediately.
- The people of Boulder are totally awesome for their support during the race. It seemed like almost all of the residents along the course came out to wave or cheer or whatever. It was AWESOME.
- The above, plus all of the side-course entertainment, whether it be bands or Elvis impersonators or belly dancers, made the run go by quickly. You almost lost focus on the run, but in a good way - for me, yes, my knee was bugging me, but I didn't pay attention to it because there was so much else to keep the senses occupied.
- At either the 2.2 mile mark or the 2.2 K mark (again, i forget which), we ran past the BolderBOULDER marshmallow throwers. There were these guys tossing marshmallows into the crowd. Around the corner, there were some people offering beer and doughnuts to the runners (which apparently our friend jimi partook in).
- The course marked the highest point ... which was 54something hundred feet. Which, really, pffft - I live at 5960something. Still, cool that it was marked.
- Brandon eventually caught back up to me with about a mile left. At about that same time, I finally grabbed a slice of bacon from some spectators. A few people along the course were handing it out, advertising it as "nature's powerbar." I figured, what the hell, and split a piece with Brandon.
- The final bit of the BolderBOULDER takes up you up this hill, Folsom, heading into Folsom Field. It's advertised as this horrible, awful, murderous hill ... which may well be true if you don't live in a place like Lone Tree like I do and run nasty hills all the time.
- The main problem was ... I kicked too early. You run up Folsom, turn right, run up some other hill and up this man-made structure into the stadium. Weeeelllll ... I thought the race ended as soon as you got into Folsom so I started kicking prior. Serves me right as you had to do a half-loop around the stadium. That about killed me, but oh well.
Final stats:
Overall place: 21431 (of about 50,000 finishers)
Division/place: F26/364 out of 771
Gender place: 8699 out of 26494
Splits:
Mile 1: 10:39.15
Mile 2: 10:33.96
Mile 3: 10:53.11
Mile 4: 10:31.73
Mile 5: 10:31.72 (look at that consistency. holy crap)
Mile 6: 10:35.70
Net time: 1:05:38.45 (10:33/mi pace)
I didn't really take pictures ... and the race photo site is stupid about linking photos. I saved all the ones of us via screencaps ... but Blogger is a giant pain in the butthole when it comes to uploading pictures from your home computer. SO. If you want to see us running ... go here, click through and search bibs FA163 (Brandon) and FA164 (me).
OVERALL VERDICT: It was nice to do this race as it is one of THE races to do not only in Colorado, but in the country/world; Runner's World voted it America's favorite 10K. Still ... will we do it again? That's the big question, and right now, I can't answer it.
Sorry to read about the knee troubles and not having a great race. It happens to all of us! (if you want proof read my blog post about the Gear West Duathlon....sigh....) I do hope to someday travel to race in Colorado :)
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