Race report: Boulder Spring Half.

Sunday I ran a 10K at the Boulder Spring Half. Its name is perhaps not transparent to those who don't know its history. The same sponsors were in charge of the former "Boulder Backroads," now the "Boulder Marathon," which takes place each September. (That race offers marathon and half-marathon courses.) This year is the first year they've added a spring race, with three courses: a half-marathon, 10-mile, and 10K. I ran the shortest of the courses for a variety of reasons, primarily a recent injury that took me away from training for five weeks.

The transportation and parking situations were great. I cruised in and out of the race site almost without having to stop, and didn't arrive at the Boulder Reservoir until just about 45 minutes before the race start. The race course itself was quite familiar and not too muddy; the Rez is a wonderful place to run with gentle rolling hills, and the course was clearly marked. (And the course came out within .05 of a mile with my RunKeeper, which made me happy in terms of gauging my own race pace and progress.) It turned out I had several friends and acquaintances also running that day, which made it fun to see people along the course.

In terms of off-course details, though, I feel the registration cost should have been significantly lower. There were almost no vendors at the race, very little "free" stuff for participants, and the food available was not very good. (They would have been better off sticking to fresh fruit and sports drinks, which thank goodness were available and plentiful.) The plain-white bamboo technical race shirt was not attractive, and the organizers wouldn't allow me to switch shirt sizes at packet pick-up but asked me to come back the next day after the race and see if they had any of the other sizes left. I understand the issues around shirt size switching because of the necessity of ordering in advance. However, that puts the burden on organizers to do a better job of describing their shirt sizes on the registration site, including approximate measurements, so people don't end up with technical cleaning rags instead of race shirts. (My daughter now will have a new nightshirt.)

I loved running a 10K and don't have any plans to train for a longer race this year. I'm still figuring out the rest of my season but I'm thinking I'll probably do the BolderBoulder on Memorial Day, and perhaps a sprint triathlon in August or September as that will give me the summer to work on swimming and biking. Lots of fun choices ahead now that the days are getting warmer and longer!

Oh, and I managed to finish under an hour--pretty good for me pace-wise after five weeks off!--and 24th in my age group out of 270 finishers. So even though I feel like a turtle, there were plenty of other turtles out there with me, having a great day.