Not to be upstaged by Chicago and Boston, the Boulderthon is finally here

STRONGER FASTER HAPPIEST HEALTHIEST COOLEST MOST SCENIC HISTORIC EPIC fails to convey the entire message, so here we* go

Last October 11, Boulder, Colorado was supposed to host a new marathon and half-marathon. Given the number of artistic types who have settled here, it’s no surprise that the event was given an unusually creative name: the Boulderthon. With a course boasting “FOR THE FIRST TIME IN HISTORY, AN EPIC DOWNTOWN FINISH,” the organizers promised to deliver “THE SIGNATURE CITY MARATHON THAT BOULDER DESERVES.” (Wherever you see all-caps text in this post, it’s imported from the original source.)

When, starting in the spring of 2020, mass running events were postponed or canceled wholesale, the Boulderthon became one of COVID-19’s hundreds of long-overdue, widely celebrated U.S. road-race casualties. The event was rescheduled for April 25 of this year, but that date that also passed with no one yet able to “RUN A MARATHON (OR HALF) IN THE HAPPIEST CITY IN AMERICA.”

Now, with the unfortunate return of marathons and shorter road-slogs aimed at relieving the shuffling class of cash better invested in prostitutes and fentanyl, it appears that the Boulderthon races will finally happen, five days from today. That’s the same day as the Chicago Marathon and the day before the first Columbus Day Boston Marathon, so the Boulderthon’s total prize purse of $2,800 seems unlikely to draw a great deal of international, domestic, county, or even zip-code-level talent, despite the allure of a mostly point-to-point course that starts at 5,200’ above sea level, finishes at about 5,350’, and includes over 900’ of climbing, much of it on dirt.

Because it takes a lot of work to initiate and operate even small-scale running events in Boulder even when pandemics aren’t an issue, I decided to look under the hood of this one and see what strategies the clearly ambitious organizers are using to attract non-local participants, the primary target of their marketing efforts. Although neither a PR type nor an accountant, I can talk out of my ass just as effectively as the most sterling representative of either profession, so the analysis below is amazing, bordering on the unreal in places. Don’t forget to share, subscribe, and re-donate.

The company putting on the Boulderthon, which in laying the foundation for the event acquired the 19-year-old Boulder Backroads Marathon and Half-Marathon series, is called STRONGER FASTER BOULDER CO. This organization is a 501(c)(3) non-profit established last year and whose mission statement includes “Supporting youth running through the donation of shoes and gears to local underfunded schools”—maybe these schools do bike or car-transmission work in a vocational-technical wing?—along with a promise to follow the rules of the sport while promoting and advertising it (you can read the whole mission statement here).

In the words of the event’s “About Us” page, “The Boulderthon® was created by an avid New York Road Runners runner to spread the joy of marathons.” I assume this runner is the race director, Phil Dumontet. I’m confident that Mr. Dumontet knew before arriving in Boulder that the city no more needs an introduction to the concept of distance running than San Francisco is waiting for someone to tell same-sex couples it’s okay to walk around in public holding hands. Of greater interest is the fact that the NYRR is also a “non-profit organization” whose principals rake in a great deal of monetary compensation.

I have no idea what procedural hoops are required for an entity to gain 501(c)(3) status with the Internal Revenue Service, but I know of many that exist for the sole purpose of collecting online donations just to bash gay people under the aegis of religion, and no one in the government seems eager to dismantle this popular and obvious tax dodge. I imagine that simply writing checks to the right people in the necessary amounts—maybe even a single check—is sufficient to ensure non-profit status for anyone who wants it. But in any case, the only mention of charitable giving on the Boulderthon site is a note that any clothing abandoned by runners on the course will be donated to the needy.

The entry-fee schedule is notable for allowing people to volunteer their labor at no cost, starting at 6 a.m. As of September 26, volunteers were still needed to work fluid tables, distribute bibs, ride the course on bicycles, and conduct other vital aspects of the races.

For the extra $100 (or $109) in the VIP entry fee, runners apparently get access to a triad of specially designated portable toilets. “VIP parking” means first dibs on the parking spots miles away at Boulder High School; no parking is allowed at or near the start, although runners can have a friend drop them off there rather than take the bus. Either way, the weather had better be nice, because in this one respect, the Boulderthon has a bit of Boston Marathon flavor to it, as people will be hanging around outside waiting to run.

Prize money will be allotted as follows. $2,800 translates to about thirteen VIP marathon bibs or about two dozen regular ones.

The event invites world-class runners to apply for a free shot at one of these bonanzas.

Boulderthon® has established an athlete elite program to bring world-class athletes in from our own backyard, to runners from all over the globe with special incentives. If you are male with a PR of 2:30 or female with a PR 2:40, please contact us at hi@boulderthon.org for more information.

At a glance, 2:30 for a male seems a little easier than 2:40 for a woman. That’s a 6.7-percent difference, far less than the most stringent applicable standard of a shade over 10 percent at the very top, and comically smaller than the more realistic 15 percent or so that separates merely very good male runners from very good females (a comparison of the World Athletics top distance lists to the NCAA and U.S. high-school lists confirms this figure). Since no “very top” marathoners will be running the Boulderthon, I’d peg equivalent times at closer to 2:30 and 2:50-low, or, going the other way, 2:20-low and 2:40.

I thought about contacting them for a bib, since my PR is well under 2:30 and there appears to be no limit on how many decades ago a qualifying time had to have been achieved. But I was put off by the absence of categories aimed at the growing array of other genders, so I will save my hard-earned dough for something else. At least they had the sense of not incentivize “fast” old people to run by offering masters money.

The courses are a pain in the ass, although this can’t be helped around here because the town is actively inimical to having events on roads that people routinely drive cars on. I would bet that Mr. Dumontet et al. made every effort to have both the start and the finish of the races downtown, but someone in his position would stand a better chance of securing cooperation from city officials in at least 95 percent of similarly sized American municipalities.

Either way, this is the result. The first few miles are run on soft dirt, and the portions on rec paths will be unpleasant because tired legs dislike hard, rolling concrete underfoot. Those paths will feature the same loose battalion of inattentive morons on skateboards, scooters and worse who take to those paths every weekend morning, And the last 10K or so of the marathon is a climb.

Although there must be two dozen men in the immediate area capable of busting out a 2:35 on the Boulderthon course (worth maybe a 2:24 on a sea-level course like Chicago’s) and a similar number of women who could manage a 2:55, all without causing a significant burp in their training, it seems unlikely that any of them, even the morbidly impecunious ones, will be willing to go out there on Sunday and grind one out just for five hundred clams. I’m guessing those will be about the winning times, with the half—being a clearly better target of casual road-whores than the full—probably seeing a 1:10-1:12 for men and a 1:18-1:21 for women.

The fact that runners enjoy living here should not lead you to believe that this city is welcoming or even tolerant of their presence. Apart from the Bolder Boulder—which started in 1979, takes place on a national holiday, and was never expected to blow up into a 10K with over 50,000 entrants—and a few criterium-style events downtown, very few of the footraces within city limits are run on residential streets, instead being consigned mainly to a single business-park setting a few miles northeast of town.

Lee Troop, who has kept running races within Boulder afloat in recent years almost by himself, told me that when gathering signatures from residents for a prospective road race in their South Boulder neighborhood in 2019, 91 percent of the responses were approving—significantly above the minimum cut-off of 80 percent. Yet for whatever reason, he still couldn’t conduct a race there.

Some of this is just the result of people accustomed to getting their way not wanting to be inconvenienced for even a single morning, founded on an “I moved here specifically to avoid inconveniences” mentality. But I suspect a lot of the antipathy is owed to previously pedestrian-neutral people growing to reflexively despise the ubiquitous sight of anyone exercising on Boulder County public roads, especially in groups and even more so when the riders or runners seem to be having a good time.

I blame most of the latter animus on cyclists, a facile scapegoat for everything. Cyclists tend to operate as pack animals and move at higher speeds than runners, unavoidable traits that motorists hate them for. Because runners are physically indistinguishable from cyclists missing their bikes, it makes sense to hate us*, too, especially since we’re not blameless out there. Ironically, among the event- and fun-resistant are no doubt some of the oldster couples wobbling around the common paths on $12,000 Pinarello racing bikes they apparently bought on a whim and enjoy riding alongside similarly unsteady but well-equipped novices.

But that class of beaming, life-actualizing perambulator is exactly what the Boulderthon is designed for. Given the city’s reputation as a place to come and gawk at the scenery, casually drop a couple hundred bucks at an eatery with a microbrewery on site, and scope out properties suitable for flipping, it was inevitable that marketing efforts would center on the notion of Boulder as a true American one-off—a place with so many pertinent superlatives to its credit that it’s a crime that it took this long for someone to establish a pricey marathon run mostly on paths and back roads because the city itself really wants no part of it.

As of this moment, “LESS THAN 100 SPOTS REMAIN!” (Fewer? Less? Fuck it, this isn’t a grammar rodeo.) This number stood at 250 on September 22; on September 29, the race announced on Facebook that it was offering 100 bibs gratis, so maybe that’s where some of those 150 entries went in the meantime.

As of two months ago, the race organizers estimated that 40 percent of entrants would be traveling from significantly far away to run. I assume that this is a high figure for any non-mass event. While this is to be expected, I should not discount the huge number of present locals who were once just the kind of nimrod who traveled here for stupid shit like the Boulderthon and whose poserific behavior hasn’t changed since. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a significant aliquot of Boulderites and L-towners out there despite knowing how little value their money is buying, because most of what they spend here—and I’m not talking about just young adults, either—is some faraway relative’s money.

When I first arrived here, I was astonished at the phenomenon of “running groupies”—dudes who has moved here despite being stuck at six-minute pace for 10K solely because they wanted to copulate with someone who holds fast times in the sport of running. As ferociously pathetic as this is, it’s been going on since Christ was in diapers and will continue for as long as Boulder remains a mecca for weirdos with a flair for sucking the wrong penis or penetrating the wrong vagina at exactly the wrong time.

I suspect that this race is going to make good money no matter how few people wind up registering, and people with a far better sense of race economics mostly concur. They are limiting their overhead, in no small part by offering dog shit for prize money. That they display galactic gaps in their knowledge of elite running (or maybe just want to piss off women) is not going to be off-putting to anyone flying here from California to bag a tourist-marathon medal. At any rate, I doubt this will be the last anyone sees of the fucking thing.

The weather is supposed to be great, but ideally, the LORD will intercede and it will snow, with massive bolts of lightning spiking from Mordor-like gray skies striking the ground near runners every few seconds without actually hurting anyone. That would be epic, and not all that much to ask considering that we got eight freak inches of snow a month earlier than this in 2020. If so, I will put on my anorak and stand cheering at mile 24 anyway, being a nontrivial component of the pathology-riddled “Nothing fucking better to do!” Boulder scene.

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Suggested reading: Here’s how fucking happy Boulder is on the verge of electing new city council members.