The Bolder Boulder is a 10k road race held on Memorial Day in Bolder CO. This was the 33rd year. It is one of the biggest 10k racing in the country and there were people from all over who were in attendance. After everything was all said and done it was reported that there 
were over 55,000 people who participated that day. Holy Cow! I knew there were a lot of people but never would have guessed that many.With the horn sounding and adrenaline pumping I was off, embarking on a big milestone in my life. I was off to a good start about 11mins in and out of nowhere I got double shin splits. Are you kidding me? I had been getting shin splits pretty constantly in training but it was only one shin. I have to tell you I was in so much pain, the tears were flowing. I prayed to God to take away this pain..I had worked so hard for this and wanted to finish strong. However the pain remained, mentally I was defeated and I was about to call my sister to come pick me up. I fought with myself, I was already here, had already paid. I was going to finish this race if I had to walk the whole thing. It wasn't until mile 3 that the shin splits went away.
The thing that is really cool about the Bolder Boulder is that they have like 30 some bands who are lined up along the course, as well as slip n slides, belly dancers, people with marshmallow guns, you name it they pretty much had it. It was also great seeing all the different costumes.
This was a very emotional race for me, as I ran I just thought about how far I had come. It wasn't but 4 mos prior that I sat on the couch and stuffed my face as I watched the Biggest Loser. Amazed at the transformation they went through and disgusted that I could not or more importantly would not do it for myself. But here I was in the middle of a 10k and again the tears flowed down. For the first time in a long time I was proud of myself for my accomplishments. As I got closer to the stadium and heard all the people who sat and cheered I was amazed and couldn't help but let the tears fall. (Yes, I was crying again) Then once I entered the stadium and saw all those people I was so overwhelmed. I pretended that they were all there to see me run, I felt like I was on top of the world. It was also great that my family was there to cheer me on, thank you Mom, Nicole, Eric and Ariel! (also Brett and Christina) Thank you also to everyone else who has been there with encouragement through Facebook as well as txts, it all means so much to me!
I finished my 10k in 1:33:10:76 and it felt incredible to cross that line. Here are some of my other stats:
Overall place> 38429
Divison place> 645 out of 741
Gender place> 19107 out of 26317
Still have a long way to go but looking forward to that 1/2 in October. I will keep you udpated!
