Our first Bolder Boulder

We did good! We both finished under the time needed to get into a qualifying wave for next year's race (62 minutes).
Check out our results and mile splits: Laurel, Dan.
Check out photos taken at the race: Laurel, Dan.

The race was a zoo -- something like 54,000 people. I think we ran 10 kilometers in the forward direction and 1 km side to side trying to get around people. The race is started in waves that are released a few minutes apart to provide some spacing along the course. How many waves? About 50 waves of runners and 30 waves of joggers. This video shows just one wave starting:



There was live music all along the course, people on the sidelines cheering and giving high fives, two troupes of belly dancers, Elvis, the Blues Brothers, people handing out beer and food (chicken, bacon, chips, grapes), people with hoses and squirt guns, a slip-n-slide, a guy holding a hula-hoop for people to run through (which I did after grabbing a few grapes)... and then some of the runners: in gorilla suits, a few kids dressed up as bananas, a guy in a solar panel costume, a guy in a "riding an ostrich" costume, a "gorilla holding a guy in a cage" costume, a guy strung up like a marionette, a French maid, a bride with her team of bridesmaids, some graduates, etc.

There was a lot of energy in this race. I haven't run a race in 15 years and now I'm pretty psyched to get back into it.

After the race we met our friends Ann and Sean in the stadium and hung out for a while. We got great snack packs and got to drink free Michelob Ultra at 9 AM. We stayed to watch runners finishing the race for an hour and a half. On our walk back home we stopped to watch the professionals race -- their fastest times were less than half of ours. Very impressive.