Bolder Boulder 10k; 35:13; 1st Age Group

I ran the Bolder Boulder for the first time since middle school on Monday. It was fun, and I had a good race. I ran 35:13, which won my age group (age 47, BB does it by your exact age). 

The Bolder Bouder was the first race I ever ran in Colorado, back in 1990, if I remember correctly. A kid named Kevin Blue moved from Greeley to my elementary school in Lone Tree and tried to recruit someone to run with him. My older sister ran cross country and track at the time, and so I was curious about trying it myself, and I gave it a go. I think I ran 49 minutes and he ran 41 minutes. I’ve been a runner ever since. 

The race was more or less how I remembered it, all these years later. But this was my first time in the A wave, I think. The start was high energy, frenetic, and chaotic. I lined up right behind one of the banana men, and the race went off more like a XC race than a typical road race. But I settled into a groove after a couple of hundred meters. 

I think I paced the race well. I hit the 5k in 17:41, then I picked things up a bit through the next couple of miles. It started to rain pretty heavily toward the end of the race. I don’t think the rain impacted performance much, except for when we got into the stadium and had to run on the tarp. Supershoes and a slick, wet tarp are a bad combination, but I didn’t see anyone go down, perhaps surprisingly. 

I haven’t run a ton of 10ks in my life, so that is a lifetime PR for me. Makes me think I could go sub-35 at low altitude, maybe even sub 34 if conditions were perfect on the right course. 

My time this year puts me #14 all time for 47-year-olds. So I get to have my name here for at least a few years. On that 40-49 .pdf, I see a lot of names of people I have considered heroes or have revered with a sense of awe: Frank Shorter, Doug Bell, Ardel Boes, Pablo Vigil, Herb Lindsey, Ric Rojas, Dave Dooley, Todd Straka, Melody Fairchild, Colleen De Reuck, Ellen Hart-Pena, Clint Wells, Frank Richardson, Simon Gutierrez, Bernie Boettcher. 

I’m not in their league, but it’s cool to have my name somewhere in their vicinity, at least for a little while. 

That Kevin Blue kid (he called himself “Cup” Blue, for some stupid reason) has always been on those lists dating back to when we ran together. I was always a bit envious of that. Perhaps poignantly, I think he got booted off the 11-year-old list this year for good. His 41-minute 11-year-old time no longer makes the cut. He quit running a looong time ago. But it's funny to me that the person who first got me into running got knocked off those lists at the exact same time I was able to make my way on to those lists, a full 35 years later. 

End of 2024/Start of 2025 Musings

2024 was the best year I ever had as a runner. 

It was the most miles I ever ran in a year, with 3563 miles. That’s 500 more than my previous best, which was 2023, when I ran just over 3000 miles. And it was my best year in terms of races and results. CIM was likely my best age-graded result of all time. GTIS wasn’t too far behind. And I wasn’t far off the course record at the Spiral Drive race. The Vail Hill Climb was good but not great. But there were no bad races this year. And I’ve had my fair share of crappy races in the past. 

I discovered in my 40s that I respond well to volume and threshold training. Admittedly, I’m not sure I had any understanding of what threshold training even was before my 40s, but now that I do, I’m finding that I can do more volume and quality than I ever thought possible. And I can be a better runner than I previously thought possible, as well. In my early 30s, I set a goal to run 16:59/35:59/1:19/2:49. I never ran any of those times in my 30s, but I blew all those times out of the water in my 40s. That was my bucket list of times in 2013. I ran them all in 2023 and 2024. And 2:39? I never saw that one coming. 

2024 was also a very good year for me as a coach. 

There were two notable coaching moments this year. 

I coached a local runner named Kristine Clark to two world championship golds at the World Masters Athletics Championships. Kris is 61, and she proved herself to be the best distance runner in her age group worldwide this year. Among Kris’s accomplishments: Fastest age-graded time at the Carlsbad 5000 (19:26 – converts to just over 15-flat age graded); Fastest women’s over-60 time in Bolder Boulder history by almost two minutes (42:10); World Championship Record in the 5000 at the WMAC in Gothenburg, Sweden (19:28 in muggy conditions); World XC Champ in the 8k. 

Kris was a superstar before I started coaching her. But my main contribution to her training, I think, was keeping her healthy enough to show off how strong of a runner she is. She had a great six months of training with no injuries from January through July. That’s all she needed to set the gold standard in her age group. 

The other big highlight was coaching (as an assistant) the Salida boys XC team to a 3A state championship. I can’t take too much credit for this one, since I was only a part-time assistant, but it was certainly fun being along for the ride there as well. That team came really close in 2021 (best ever team score for 2nd place), but this year they got it done. Salida is small for its class, and always competes against private schools that draw from a wider geographic area (teams 2-5 this year 3A all had the word “Academy” in their name). It was good to see those kids get the reward they deserved.

What’s new for 2025? Running-wise, not much. More of the same. In terms of races, I plan to race the Vail Hill Climb and the NYC marathon. Other than that, maybe Imogene Pass and the Bolder Boulder. I will likely be extremely busy with work the first four months of the year, so that could impact my training and coaching. I'd like to run a fast low-altitude 10k and half marathon at some stage, but haven't had time to plan anything yet.

I also hope to write more in 2025. I enjoy doing it, here and elsewhere. We’ll see if I can bang out a few more words with more consistency.

Feels weird to report this much positivity in a blog here. I feel like the first 12 years of this blog were a string of excuses for why I wasn’t as good of a runner as I wanted to be. Now it’s all coming up roses. Gotta enjoy it while it lasts, because you know it won’t last forever.