Bolder Boulder Build-Up!

It's that time of year in Boulder!

Signs like this are now up on many of the roads and highways around town:

To give you an idea of how running crazy this town is, especially around Memorial Day and the Bolder Boulder 10K, I took a ride around town on my break at work and took a couple of pictures (yeah, I know, me taking pictures...hell IS freezing over). I just joined Boulder's new B-Cycle program, which lets members borrow bikes from stations set up around town to run errands without hauling the car out every time. Here's me this morning with my giant B-cycle cruiser--that thing was like the tank of bikedom, but it got the job done:




Yeah, I do wear clogs pretty much constantly.


The first great thing about the Bolder Boulder 10K is that the course is marked with little signs all year round. These signs mark the miles....

...and also tell you when you need to turn (sometimes it's a weird turn, like this one).




That pointy peak on the left is Bear Peak. The sign is blocking Green Mountain, which I'm still hoping to run at some point.

The finish line is inside the University of Colorado stadium, where all runners are cheered by the crowd in the stands. You know you're almost finished when you pass the statue of the legendary Frank Shorter, who helped get this race started.

The race has its own store, set up for several weeks at the 29th Street Mall:



Fancy, huh? I didn't take this--borrowed it from the Bolder Boulder's Facebook page. Thanks!

I'm excited about the race this year. I am in the CC wave, which starts at 7:10 a.m. (my kind of time). My goals are pretty nebulous. I'd like to beat my time from last year for sure (it was 55-something), my post-pregnancy 10K PR from 2009 of 53:24 and (moonshot goal here) my pre-pregnancy PR of 51:42. Beating my post-preg PR isn't certain. My appetite is finally mostly back post-stomach-bug. But I still get a wave of queasiness every once in a while, and my sleep has been seriously compromised this week in Dan's absence (he's been in Finland for a work trip; he gets back Friday--yay! I MISS him).

So I'm going to try to sit back and take whatever race day gives me.

Even if I don't do well, I'll be able to get a massage, watch Ryan Hall later in the elite race (I wonder if I'll see him at any restaurants ahead of the race this time!) and hang out with my friend Kathy, who just ran her first-ever sub-25-minute 5K and will be starting about two minutes after I do.

We'll both be running well behind this guy, who took the RunColo Challenge I mentioned a few weeks back and qualified for the Bolder Boulder's fastest wave, the A wave, by running on a treadmill wearing paper leis and with an inflatable duck around him for the required two miles. He ran it in 11 minutes and 10 seconds. Wow.

I actually watched the whole video. There's not much action, except that toward the middle the duck falls off. But I was strangely riveted. As usual in Boulder, I am not worthy.