Memorial Day morning found 5 of the 7 of us running through the streets of Boulder for the annual Bolder Boulder 10K. We could not have asked for a nicer day, it started out cool and cloudy with just enough sun poking through to justify our short sleeves but never enough to make it too warm to run.
This was Leighton’s 5th running of the Bolder Boulder (I think it was my 7th or 8th….I ran it in middle school a couple of times….). His goal this year was to beat an hour. He ran well enough last year to qualify for one of the faster waves. He was focused through his run and only deviated from the course to do one of the slip-n-slides and to do a cartwheel at the cartwheel station. He ended up finishing in 1 hour 4 minutes, so just shy of his goal, but he put in a solid effort and I was chasing him up the final hill to stay with him. He ended up 35th our of 265 9 year old boys, which he was quite proud of.
After he and I finished we began the waiting game for Clint, Caedmon and Edric to finish. They had a new app this year where people could be tracked (if they were over 18), which worked really well. In fact just as we finished and were getting our goodie bags I saw on the app that one of my partners from work was finishing and so we met up with him. Leighton got a photo of us, I’m currently the youngest partner in our doctor group and he’s the oldest so it seemed fitting, our finishing times were within a minute of each other. Clint and the boys were making better time than I had expected and it actually didn’t take too long before they were crossing the line. I was smart and had insisted that Edric wear a bright orange shirt which helped us pick them out of the finish line crowd.
We met up with them at the finish area and all the boys plopped down and explored their goodie bags and devoured just about everything in them. Clint was shocked that the boys were still hungry because besides doing both slip n slides and the trampoline, they had eaten cotton candy, popsicles, bacon, doritos, grapes, and who knows what else along the way. Their time was actually exactly double what ours was. And Clint said that there were no tears which was impressive this year.
After eating all their goodies we headed out to the expo where the kids found more popsicles, chicken nuggets, jelly beans, gummys, and juice to drink. Leighton found the Army tent where they had a pull up bar set up and so he busted out 10 pull ups without a problem which impressed the crowd that was standing around. We then found our seats for the Memorial Day celevration. The tributes this year were in honor of Gold Star families, those that had lost family members in combat. The celebrations concluded with parachutes landing, each with large flags of the different branches of the military.
It was a great day and everyone had fun (and were TIRED that night). We are already looking forward to next year’s race and trying to figure out how we will manage when we have 5 little runners….
Hiking Mommy 