Bolder Boulder 10K

So this race is exactly 2 weeks after Quadrock where I rolled my ankle pretty bad, so I had no real goals in mind.  The week after Quadrock I covered a total of 20 miles and took 4 days off.  The week of the race was much better, around 50ish miles but all of the miles were just light jogging on a smooth surface which meant roads or smooth trails.  I was not able to do my normal vertical and effort.  Oh well...

Race morning I felt good, got up early to eat my normal eggs and toast before hand and drove off to Boulder to get in a warmup.

After about 4 miles of jogging around it was time to line up where I ran into JV and followed him to the front of the corral to the A wave.  Yes I did steal some of the photos below, it is just retarded that they want $20 a photo.  If they had any common sense they would sell them for $1-2 bucks a piece for a download.  They would make so much more $, hell I would have bought all of them they had of me (about 12 of them).  Take that times 40,000 plus people and that is some serious coin.

Still enjoying the morning.

 Photo stolen

Photo by Todd Straka

I did not wear my HR monitor, my plan was just to run as evenly as possible at a hard effort with the goal of breaking 40 mins which meant trying to keep my pace under 6:28 per mile.  I honestly did not think I would be able to do this.  I was looking at my watch to keep up my pace throughout the race.

In the pain cave now!

  Photo stolen

 Photo stolen

 As I hit the final hill into the stadium I looked down at my watch to be totally shocked at the total time!  Up to this point I was only watching my pace and had not looked at my total time yet.  I had over 3:00 to cover the last 0.2 or so miles to be under 40 mins!  YES!!!  Final time 38:42:62, a new PR in the 10K for me!  Here are how the splits broke down, pretty damn even effort if I must say so myself.  You can see the hill from mile 3 to 4 in the mile 4 pace though.  My Strava data is over here which measured the course long, that is most likely due to me going around people and not cutting the corners correctly.

This effort earned me one of these babies which I will wear proudly.

Photo by Todd Straka

 So a few days later yes I am still sore from this effort, especially in the hamstrings.  The rest of the week will just be jogging around on smooth surfaces at an easy pace to let the soreness work itself out and let the ankle heal a little more.  Next up is Dirty Thirty 12 miler 5 days after the Bolder Boulder on June 1st.  I did drop down from the 50k due to my ankle not being very stable on rocky trails yet but do plan on racing the 12 miler.  I did not want to risk my whole summer by doing the 50K and setting back the ankle.  Should be an interesting month with quite a few races.