I went out for this race to take first in my wave group of 50.00 - 51.59. Last year I got 50:22 in the Bolder Boulder. I have been training really hard since then and I had a feeling I really had good chance to win this thing! Also, I have always wanted to run a sub 20 5k my whole life and I have still never done so. Last week I hit a new PR on the Turkey day 5K of 20:16 in Highlands Ranch and I felt like I held back on that race so if I pushed it right, I could finally hit a sub 20 5k!

I was going to try to pace myself and run 6:26 on mile one, 12:52 on mile 2, and hit mile 3 at 19:18 and that would put me at 19:58 on the full 5K if I kept that pace. This was the plan...

I sized up my competition right away and saw the top 3 I had to beat immediately before the start. You can usually tell by body build who is an avid runner and these 3 were built for speed.

The gun went off and immediately 5 guys shot out front. The additional 2 that I hadn't sized up as competition weren't really a worry to me. I could just smoke'em later, (and I did at mile 1!)

I passed up 2 of the lead pack and had 3 left to go just before mile one. I looked at my watch at the mile one marker and I had way negative split! I was at 5:49! Ouch! I knew I was going to pay for that later...

I eased up a little and still plucked off 2 more in doing so... on the hills of course! I love to pass on hills... it really crushes a man's ego when you surge on a hill and they're just hurting! I offered words of encouragement though as I passed them. Something like, "Good job" or "Keep it up, you're doing great!" Now... I had one left to go!

I hit mile 2 and my watch read 12:00 flat! I wanted to be at 12:52! Damn! Another negative split! I was going to be hurting this last mile and still had one more to catch!

This kid was fast and just kept pulling away with each step. I later found out he was 15! He looked to be 18 if I had to guess. Anyway, he got 19:48! WOW! If I had paced better and not pushed so hard I would have only been ten seconds behind him but I went out too fast and I fell apart the last mile... Oh well, you live, you race, and you learn!

I still got a PR out of it!

I would have stuck with my personal pace and not gone out so hard! I really got caught up in the lead pack and just wanted to run fast and not smart. Lesson learned!

Jogged the field loop twice and then walked and streched for several minutes.


Over doing it on mile one big time and my knee was still buggung me a bit!


I always love Bolder Boulder ran events! They really have got there act together!