Bolder Boulder Race Report

The year is 1999. It's my first BB. My bib number is J233. I was coming from sea level - Washington DC. And yes, I had to go look all of this up. My goal was to beat Adam. I was young and not really sure what I was thinking being that he lived here at 5400 ft. and thus had much better odds of beating me. But again, I was young. 3 age groups ago in triathlon years. But this was before my triathlon years. It would be the year of my first marathon though. I believe I ran a solid BB considering it was my second 10K since the Great Race in Pittsburgh, which I believe I last ran in 3rd grade and am not even sure if I really "ran" it. I finished in 50:54, about 5 minutes after Adam. (I made up for it the following year by narrowing the losing gap to 40 seconds.)

Flash forward 11 years (wow!). My bib number is C036. And let's just say that this was my worst BB since that first one. And being that I now live here and am actually acclimated to altitude, you could so far as to say that this was my worst BB ever. I'm not really sure what happened. It could have been that I didn't feel all that prepared. But I had a great 7 mile run a few days before which made me almost reconsider. It could have been the 2 glasses of wine the night before (why ruin a good dinner when I already wasn't feeling prepared?). It could have been the complete incompetence of the bag drop people who couldn't figure out how to manage the single-file line of thousands of people waiting to drop off their bag, thus causing me to have to cut the line so that I could make my start time, and thus making me feel horribly guilty for having just cut in front of thousands of people, and thus making me have to run to the start and push through hoards of people that had the good sense to get to their wave with plenty of time to spare, and thus making me get to the C wave just as it was moving to the starting line, thus making me completely out of breath when the gun went off.

But these are just excuses. I haven't felt well rested for a while. Work is insane. Training is coming second if it comes at all. I have been skipping workouts right and left and September is right around the corner. Let's face it, I was screwed before I even got in line for the bag drop. I don't want to say that I gave up somewhere around Mile 3, but I did slow down and ask myself why I'm trying to kill myself somewhere around Mile 3. I noticeably slowed down and guess I just hoped for the best.

Things didn't get much better at the finish. The completely incompetent bag drop people hadn't gotten any better on the other side. I went to the Truck 4, whose numbers corresponded to the numbers they pasted on my bib - 2398. You'd think with the amount of waiting that people did to drop their bags off that they were doing something useful like putting the bags on the truck in numerical order. But no, that would have been too logical. 2391, nope. 2393, nope. 2400, nope. Well, maybe your bag is on another truck - it happens sometimes I was told. They told me to check Truck 5. This seemed pointless being that Truck 5 wasn't even opened when I cut the line to drop off my bag. They were only serving Truck 3 and 4 at this time. But I went to Truck 5, who took a look at my number and kindly told me that my bag would be on a different truck and to check the numbers. Yes I realize that my bag SHOULD be on Truck 4, but it doesn't appear to be. So I went to Truck 3. Again, they told me to go to a different truck. And again I tried to inform them that I wasn't a moron but could they maybe check to see if they had other bags accidentally on their truck. I must have started getting a little irate because Someone Of Importance came over to reassure me that they'd find my bag and that it's probably just on another truck. I started to ask, so what am I supposed to do, just hang out and wait for them to try and unload 20 trucks and see if mine is accidentally on one of them. But she walked away because she was Someone Of Importance and had Important Business to attend to elsewhere. Truck 6 or 7 pulls up and suddenly bags start coming off of that one and are brought to other (correct) trucks. Aha! This could be the magic group of bags that made it on the wrong truck. I went over to check and AGAIN was told that I need to go to a different truck. YES I KNOW WHICH TRUCK MY BAG SHOULD BE ON BUT NO ONE CAN FIND IT!!! Another Person Of Importance comes over to try and assuage me, asking if I had a phone in the bag. I really had to struggle to refrain myself from saying why on earth would I actually put something valuable in a bag that clearly can be so easily misplaced. But she actually said it as though a light bulb went off in her head with this brilliant idea that she seemed convinced would find me my bag. No such luck - we couldn't try and call my bag. Finally the guy that I had originally asked on Truck 4 pulls out a bag from way in the back from amount the 2200s or something and calls out my number. This process seemed to take as much time as it took me to finish the race. Beware of bag drop.

On the plus side, I had to do a 30 mile ride later in the day and for whatever reason, it turned out to be a really good ride. Don't get me wrong - it hurt like hell and my legs were on fire for most of it. But I rode pretty well despite this and was even able to charge up the hills almost as though I hadn't run a 10K that morning. Of course, now that I'm writing this I realize that I barely ran a 10K that morning and the fact that I was able to ride so well just further confirmed the fact. Oh well, so much for being a plus.

Oh, and just like in 1999, Adam beat me again by about 5 minutes. If history really does repeat itself, I'll be ready to almost crush him next year.