Wednesday, June 8, 2016

Race #4 of the Season - BolderBoulder 10K

Good morning to all.  I'm dealing with some gastro issues, so bad that I'm making an appointment with a gastroenterologist to figure out what's wrong.  I don't think it's a lactose/gluten/pickwhatevertrendeveryonethinkstheyhave disease, but I'll put it in the hands of a doctor at this point.

Anyway, last Monday was Memorial Day and since I had the day off, it was time to run the BolderBoulder.  This 10K is a tradition for many Coloradans.  There's nearly 50K participants, it finishes at Folsom Field where the CU Buffs play, there's a huge military presence racing, etc.  It's a great race.  It's also a tough course.  It's nearly all uphill.  Usually the day is warm.  It's crowded.  And there's a ton of distractions on the side of the course.  Slip N Slides, beer-chugging, belly dancing, kids with candy, it goes on and on.  It's what makes the BolderBoulder a blast.

Every year we've run it, T and I have run it hard, trying to PR.  In 2010, it was my first 10K.  2011 I wanted to better my '10 time, and so on.  In 2014, T and I ran it very very hard.  It wasn't enjoyable for us.  I'm not good at the 10K distance as it is; it's a tricky distance to pace.  From what I hear from runners, it's either a distance that you love or hate, and clearly I fall into the latter camp.  So we decided that this year, we were going to fully embrace the BolderBoulder.  We were going to have a lot of fun, hit the Slip N Slides, maybe drink beer, eat bacon, all the fun things!  To do this, we were going to go deliberately slow.  To ensure we would be deliberately slow, two days prior, we did a 57 mile bike ride that included a climb up Old Stage Road.  Operation "Trash Legs" was a success!

We got up early that morning and drove up to Boulder.  We parked at the same garage we always do and got to Starbucks early.  I pooped and had a cup of coffee.  We hung out and waited for our friends Norm and Emily.  We chatted with them for a bit, then they skedaddled.  We hung out a bit more then made our way to the bag check line near the start of the race.  It felt odd to not hop in our "wave" (I was EB this year.  Go speedy BAA 5K time) and T was in EE, but we vowed to hop in the F waves so the fun stuff would all be out and about.

We made our way towards the start in the FB wave.  Both of us vowed again to take it slow.  I love the start of this race.  There's a dude with a trumpet who plays the Call to Post right before your wave goes off.  You can imagine my giddiness as a horse racing fan.  Then the starting pistol went off, and we were on our way!

The Race
About .3 into it, I hit a porta-potty to pee.  We both said that we felt the fatigue in our legs and we were very happy.  

Here's a small list of what I did along the course:
- Slip N Slide 1x
- Ate a Red Vine
- Ate cotton candy
- Walked a lot
- High Fived some kids
- Fake-sprinted to the finish line

It wasn't a race to be sure.  It was a leisure 10K that I had a blast doing.  Simply put, I would never want to race this race again.  My friend Curtis summed it up best; the BolderBoulder is an event, not a race.

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