What a weekend! And the Bolder Boulder 2011!

It's a long one....

The weekend started out with another long and hilly training ride for the Denver Century. This weekend I joined a group of riders that were training for the DC including a girl I've come to know through Kathleen, Sarah is the one that pushed me to finish the Denver R n' R 1/2 marathon in October. We were riding another part of the DC course and it was almost as much climbing as the previous ride. This was just spread out a little more with climbs all the way to the end. There were a few dark parts...I really need to work on the whole nutrition thing. Between miles 45-55 my right quad was feeling like it wanted to cramp up and I was a little worried. After stopping at mile 54 where I inhaled some trail mix and a Gatorade and stretched a little things started looking back up, which is good since we were going up hill again. It was in fact a very nice ride and I enjoyed my first experience riding with a group. It challenged me to work hard and I was able to end the 62 mile ride with a 14.2 mph average with which I was very pleased.

Elevation profile for Saturday's ride.

I decided to take Sunday as a rest day...ok I didn't really decide to...I just was to lazy to go do anything. My legs were a little tired from the ride but no soreness at all which was good. Finally Sunday night I decided I might want to give a little thought to the Bolder Boulder coming up on Monday. As I said in the prior post this was just going to be a training run. For those of you who don't know about the Bolder Boulder it a crazy little race made up of some 55,000 thousand racers in 91 waves. Amazing race, amazingly organized.

Just a few people in front of us.

We were starting in wave MM. I ran this race with the same girl I ran it with last year. I told her this year though that she really needed to keep running if I couldn't keep up. We both were hoping to set a PR.

It's not an easy course as you can see from the elevation profile, it's pretty much either up or down and they had changed the course this year so that you started out going up instead of a short flat.

One of my favorite costumes..there were actually several more of these guys wandering around these two were nice enough to pose.

The clouds were ominous and looked as if the rain could bust open any minute. In fact at one point right before we lined up some huge and I mean huge raindrops came down and then quit almost immediately it was the strangest thing. Before long we were at the start and off we went. Dodging in and out of people and trying to run the best we could. There are so many bands and so many people on the sides as well as running that it really helps to take your mind off of the running part.

A little bit of 80's pace booty.

I felt like I was running hard, I walked the water stops but tried to run most of the rest, although there were walk breaks in there trying to get around people. I felt pretty good up until around mile 5. At that point I saw a girl who was stretching and maybe puking...I couldn't decide, but at the thought of it my stomach got a little queasy...luckily it wasn't long before something distracted me and I forget about that whole thing. And then mile 6...it's a tuff one. Yep uphill. Much walking was involved although I kept trying to tell myself I only had one mile to go and I should run. Finally up the last hill and into Folsom field where the race finish was. The stands were filling up and it's a pretty cool feeling to run in.

Official time has me at 1:11:16 which is a 10k PR for me by 3 minutes. (The previous being back in 2008 on a much easier course.)

Enjoying the post race beer while watching some of the finishers. The wind was picking up though and it was quite chilly when you are all sweaty so we didn't stick around long enough to see the elite runners.

Race stats
Division place 213 out of 464
Gender place 11447 out of 26319
mile 1 11:14
mile 2 11:11
mile 3 11:55
mile 4 11:23
mile 5 11:16
mile 6 11:50
net time 1:11:15
pace 11:29 (based on net time)
The Garmin shows that I actually ran 6.37 miles for an average pace of 11:11.

All in all a productive weekend...except still no swimming...must get to the pool more this week! Thanks for taking the time to read or skim my rambling!