Running the BoulderBoulder

Back in December, when I was not in very good shape, I ran the ColderBoulder and won a free entry ticket to the annual BoulderBoulder, which happens every Memorial Day.

So I signed up and started prepping for my first 10K (6.2 mile) race.  I’ve been a runner since high school, but had never run a race longer than 5 miles.  And I hadn’t really trained for a race since college, so I knew needed to prepare myself for what 6 miles would feel like. The 10K road race boasts huge participation (think 50,000+ runners) and people come from all over the country to run here. I knew if I was going to run this thing, I wanted to really train for it and feel great when I finished.

Thankfully, I’m part of a running club at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, so I had a built in community to get me started.  I trained from late January up until race day and in that time I also completed a Whole30.  I peaked at  7 miles two weeks before the race and made sure to spend the day before resting.

Then it was go time!

Because of my qualification time I started the race at 7:12am (so got up around 5:30am) and finished approximately 52 and half minutes later.  Luckily the course was relatively flat and because I started early the air temperature was just perfect. I finished with an average of 8:30 min/ mile, which, thanks to my training plan, was a whole 30 seconds/ mile faster than I was running back in December.  And I felt an awful lot better too.

After the race,  I picked up freebies at the Expo, got a free massage, then headed home to celebrate with my family.

Until next year, check out the photos of me looking sweaty and fit :)