North Dallas Running

I’ve been working this week on a project for a client based in Dallas. Or maybe it’s Farmers Branch. Or perhaps Addison. It’s really hard to tell because the city boundaries are really muddled up in the area. Anyway, I’ve been staying at the La Quinta up the street (which is in Addison… I guess). The area is very built up with mid-rise office buildings, restaurants, strip malls and major highways / streets, so it’s rather tricky finding a place to run that isn’t always swarming with cars and diesel fumes. But I found it. What I have dubbed the SOUTHEAST ADDISON LOOP has about 1/2 of its length contained in a high end neighborhood that includes a concrete path running along White Rock Creek. If you find yourself in this particular area (DNT & Belt Line Rd), I recommend this little jaunt. I’d also forgotten how fast I build up a sweat in the humidity and warm 80°F mornings.

I case you were wondering, La Quinta is the NaviGo Global preferred hotel. It’s like visiting a country estate in the city! Right.

And, yes, this post generally sucks. But it’s still better than the one YOU didn’t write today. I’m also doing this partially because I’m killing time sitting in a bar at DFW that has T-Mobile Hotspot coverage indulging my Shiner weakness. There are also a large number of business-type babes hanging around and I think typing away makes me look very industrious, very cool. Or maybe I just look like a workaholic dork with no friends. A fine line. A very fine line.

Home Brewing

My younger brother Kyle has decided to become a home brewer (something I’ve done on & off for the better part of the past decade). He first approached me for a little advice back at the end of Apr’07 and since then we’ve been corresponding as he’s been getting his hobby off the ground. After our most recent e-mailed Q&A exchange, I realized it might be good material for this blog.

The format will be similar to those you see for interviews… question, then response… since most of the material is already written and I just need to pull it out of our e-mails. Occasionally, I’ll toss in an editorial side bar. So, without further ado…

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Reference Materials
3. Equipment
4. Technique
5. Conclusion

Introduction
Kyle: Me and my neighbor have decided to start doing a little home brewing. I thought I should be talking to you since you’re the family expert. I’m sure I’ll be contacting you shortly with all sorts of ridiculous questions.
Me: Ah, the joy of home brewing. Reminds me I need to gather some ingredients and make a batch. It’s been a LONG time.

Reference Materials
Kyle: What I really need right now is a good book for beginners. I’m assuming you know of one that would work well for a complete novice like myself. Could you recommend one? If I can’t find it in town, I’ll just order it online.
Me: Here’s what I have on my bed stand at the moment:

• “The Brewmaster’s Bible” by Stephen Snyder. If you only buy one book, this is it. Covers the basics of technique and chemistry plus a lot of more advanced stuff. A lot of good recipes and reference tables. Truly a top notch manual.
• “Brewing Beers Like Those You Buy” by Dave Line. A rather ancient tome. You could probably take a pass on this one unless you really, really want to know how to recreate mass production beers like Schlitz or Budweiser. Then again, it has recipes for Pilsner Urquell and Tiger. Whatever.
• “Secrets from the Master Brewers” by Higgins, Kilgore and Hertlein. Recipes from brewmasters around the US. You’ll find that different books present recipes in different ways because there are various brewing methods. This book has some interesting recipes, but uses some of the more complex production methods.
• “North American Clonebrews” by Scott Russell. A good recipe book to help you make knock-offs of popular microbrews. A good second book to have.

Equipment
Kyle: I borrowed a bunch of supplies from dad already so I don’t really need a starter kit. I’m not sure about all the equipment I have, but I do have a 7 gallon bucket (primary fermentor?), 5 gallon glass carboy, siphoning tubes, 20-quart stainless steel pot, hydrometer and a few other odds and ends. As we don’t have a home brew shop in town, I’ll need to mail order the rest of the equipment.

SIDEBAR: My father Dennis was an amateur wine maker back in the 1970s when we lived in Iowa. Strawberry, chokecherry, etc. He’s held on to all his wine making gear over the years, although I don’t recall him making a single batch once we moved to Bismarck, ND in 1978.

Me: Here’s my current inventory of gadgets:

• 3 x 5gal food grade buckets plus an assortment of airlocks for fermenting. I like buckets better than carboys since they are easier to clean. One of the buckets has a little valve near the bottom on the side of the bucket to make bottling easier. I HIGHLY recommend a bucket like this since bottling with a tube under vacuum is a pain in the ass. I like to perch my bucket up on the edge of my kitchen sink with the valve over the sink and just slip bottles out of the dishwasher, into the sink and open the valve. Presto!
• 5 cases of empty, brown bottles. NO TWIST-OFFS! They will not keep a seal with the cap. Unless, of course, you and your buddy are going to burn a couple million on a brewery grade twist-off bottle capping machine. Would be kool, no? I also have a case of bomber size bottles. Kind of nice for holiday brews.
• A high temp plastic spoon for stirring the pot while brewing. Find one with a really long handle unless you want to burn your fingers. My spoon is probably about 18″ long.
• A long flexible tube connected to a rigid tube for siphoning. The rigid piece is about as long as a 5gal bucket is deep and has a little clip to secure it to the bucket. Slick.
• A couple reusable FINE mesh bags for hops (small bag) and grains (large bag). You can also use these funny cheese cloth (?) bags for this and just pitch it out (with the contents inside) after brewing for a no muss, no fuss approach. But I’m always forgetting to buy the disposable bags, so having reusable bags works better for me.
• I actually don’t have a hydrometer. After I broke my first one, then it’s replacement, I sort of gave up. They’re really useful if you’re experimenting and making up your own recipes. If you’re a cookbook hacker like me, then you really can get away without one. Most of the good recipe books you’ll copy from have specific quantities for grains and malts as well as wort boil durations. Much like making a cake, it’s hard to mess up if you follow all the instructions.
• A good thermometer. If you can find one that you can clip to the side of the kettle with the probe in the wort while boiling, that’s ideal. Be sure to calibrate the thermometer if it’s a mechanical one (vs electronic or mercury).
• I also have a big (20qt) stainless steel stock pot. Got it cheap at Big Lots. The bigger the kettle, the easier it is to boil the wort. You can have more fluids in the mix from the start and it’s easier to manage the boil and avoid boiling over. I used to use a much smaller kettle than I have now and it was just harder to work with.
• A bottle capper. Gotta have it.

Kyle: I’m definitely looking forward to the new primary fermenter and doing away with the carboy altogether. Is there any other benefit to using a carboy other than the fact that it’s the most air-tight option (assuming it’s glass)?
Me: The only things I’ve ever liked about carboys are that they are clear and, in theory, easier to keep sterile. But the downsides far outweigh that slight cool factor of seeing what’s going on since they are hard to clean. It’s different than with wine where the sediments aren’t so goopy and hard to get off the bottom at the end (unless you have one of those special carboy sprayer / cleaner things for your hose). I think a bucket can be as airtight as a carboy if you get a good one with a rubber O-ring built into the lid. As for cleaning, it’s a snap. DO NOT use a scratch pad or anything on the inside to clean after you’re done bottling. Just rinse out, then soap and water, using your hands or a soft sponge / cloth to rub off the gunk. If you scratch up the inside of the bucket, over time those little swirly scratches will start to retain material, make it harder to sterilize and may impact the flavor of your beer.

Technique
Me: Here’s a couple other tips:

• I like to brew outside. We have a side burner on our BBQ. If the wort boils over, who cares. Hose ‘er down. Plus your house won’t smell like malt for a couple days afterwards and Shannon isn’t likely to file for divorce between your 3^rd and 5^th batch.
• We have an extra deep kitchen sink. (Not that I replaced what was in the house originally just for this or anything ). To speed up the cooling of the wort after boiling, I bring the kettle inside and sit it in the kitchen sink. I then fill the sink around the kettle with water and ice. Makes things go much faster since you cannot put the wort in the bucket with yeast until it’s about 75-80degF. Also, I use cold water when topping off the fermenting bucket after pouring the wort in. Try to avoid putting ice into the wort or the fermentation bucket to cool things off. If you’re fridge is like most, ice picks up “flavors” from stuff in the fridge. Yack.
• This is key: keep everything that won’t be under boil during production super clean (like your fermentation buckets, their lids and airlocks). If you don’t, you’ll be sorry. We made a batch one time in college under less than sterile conditions and ended up with a case of brew infected with wild yeast. Not necessarily dangerous to drink, but it can impact flavor (or in our case, over-carbonate in the bottle and explode… not fun to clean-up and of course the money you spent on ingredients is poured, literally, down the drain).

SIDEBAR: Shannon is obviously Kyle’s wife. Thought I’d point that out for the slow learners.

Me: After you pour the wort into the carboy and top off with water, you should let it cool to room temperature. Remember the importance of temperature when adding the yeast. If it’s too hot, it’ll kill the yeast and you’re hosed. If you added really cold water and now the diluted wort is too cold, it’ll take a long while for the yeast to get rolling while the wort warms to room temperature. After adding in the yeast, you should stir the wort fairly vigorously to oxygenate the wort and distribute the yeast. BTW… I use the term “room temperature” very loosely. Different yeasts like different temperatures. Not sure what kind of yeast you have (or if it was wet in tube or dehydrated), but ALWAYS read the label on the yeast closely as not all yeasts are created equally. Yet another reason I tend towards pale ales as the yeasts for that type of brew are fast acting and work well at the temperature my basement tends to be in the summer (68-72°F). Your basement temps might vary as well, so wander around and try to find a place that fits. If it’s not exact, oh well, it’ll most likely turn out okay anyway. WARNING: Some yeasts go crazy. That’s cool and exciting, but can make a mess if it goes so fast and makes so much foam it blows out your airlock and gets all over the place. Be sure to put your carboys on concrete or in a box / plastic bin or something just in case this happens. Don’t want to ruin your rugs.
Kyle: We cooled the wort down to about 70 degrees before pouring it into the carboy. The 3 gallons of water that we added were also room temperature. I believe that we stirred the yeast in properly. It was a little difficult because of the narrow mouth on the glass carboy. We ended up using a metal hot dog roasting stick as we couldn’t find anything else narrow and long enough to reach the bottom of the carboy. It was kind of a thin wire contraption, but I could see the sediment swirling around pretty good.

Kyle: After we added the wort to the glass carboy and added water, the brew appeared very muddy (not dark, more like river sludge). There is also an insane amount of sediment on the bottom. Is this normal for an amber? Do we want to somehow filter the beer when we pour it into the bottling bucket? I did just order a new bucket with a spigot (should be here by Friday (15.Jun.07)). I assumed that by using the spigot, I would just leave the bottom portion behind while bottling which would include most of the sediment.
Me: All the stirring and the grain sediments in suspension should leave the wort pretty cloudy. Not too worry as all that stuff will settle to the bottom over the next couple weeks while you let it ferment. I have never filtered the wort as I poured it into my fermentation bucket. After a few days and depending on the yeast you’re using, top or bottom fermenting, you’ll also notice either: a) some nasty looking, caramel colored foam on the top of the wort or b) some creamy gunk on the bottom of the carboy. That’s a normal by product of the yeast doing it’s thing on the sugars in the wort. All that stuff, the grain sediments and yeast output (I believe it’s actually dead yeast), will be left behind when you bottle. No need to filter. If you got the right bottling bucket, the tap will be mounted on the side with the intake hole about an inch or so off the bottom of the bucket. This’ll keep you from sucking all the muck at the bottom of the bucket into bottles. If you’re using a top fermenting yeast, just be careful as you get to the bottom of the bucket during bottling and you don’t let some of the foamy crap suck into the tap intake and into a bottle. If you do, just dump out that bottle.
Me: The final clarifying of the beer will happen in the bottle. As you let it condition for a couple weeks and the last bit of yeast does its thing to carbonate the brew in the bottle, some more sediment will come to the bottom. That’s natural and if you take a close look at the bottom of a lot of microbrews like Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, you’ll see a little bit of yeast hanging at the bottom of the bottle. You can try a bit of the beer as you are bottling it, but it won’t taste that great because it’s not carbonated, it’s at room temperature and it’ll likely be a little malty since the yeast probably ran out of oxygen during the main fermenting cycle. When you bottle, more oxygen will come into the beer and the bit of yeast that survived will work on that oxygen and malt to finish off the flavor.
Me: We should also talk about fining ingredients sometime. Irish moss, for instance, will also help with beer clarity.

Kyle: From one of your previous mails, it sounds like you sanitize your bottles by running them through the dishwasher? Do you need to remove the old labels first? Shannon thinks that if we wash them with the labels on, they’ll come off in the dishwasher and make a huge mess.
Me: I’d recommend stripping the labels as Shannon has suggested. The glue they use on the paper sort of melts in water and you will have a total mess on your hands if you go straight into the dishwasher. Just put a few inches of water in your bathtub and toss in the bottles. After a few minutes, the labels will loosen up and slide right off. Easy.

Conclusion
Me: I recommend that your first batch be a pale ale of some sorts. These are typically pretty simple recipes and are hard to screw up (ego building beers). Hefeweizen’s are also pretty straight forward as are many German styles. I think this is due to the now repealed Reinheitsgebot law that forced simple, straightforward recipes. Avoid the high octane stuff for now (like imperial stout) since these are expensive and much more complicated. Lagers are also a more complicated production. Besides, pale ales are a lot of fun. You can play with the bitterness a lot by experimenting with hops quantities and hops boil durations.
Kyle: My neighbor and I brewed up our first batch last Saturday (09.Jun.07). I hadn’t read enough of my Brewmaster’s Bible to feel comfortable starting yet, but he was pretty impatient and bought a pre-packaged kit of ingredients. Also, he’s got a copy of your very informative email with tips and suggestions. I was assuming we’d start with a pale ale to keep it simple, but he ended up going with an amber. I have a feeling I may end up brewing the next batch on my own or possibly sit him in a corner and make him watch.
Me: I’ve tried ambers before and found them a bit tricky. If you don’t have the EXACT stuff for the recipe, it can come out wrong. Like the batch I made the last time you guys came to Steamboat that ended up kinda malty / fruity tasting. Gack. That was supposed to be a knock-off of Alaskan Amber, but didn’t turn out right. I think it was the yeast I substituted that ruined it. If you guys used a pre-packaged kit with the right grains and yeast, it ought to be okay.

Kyle: I’m not really that confident that it will turn out well as my neighbor couldn’t quite grasp the concept of keeping everything sterile even after several reminders. He actually dried off the spoon and thermometer with a garage rag after sanitizing them….kind of defeating the purpose. Anyway, we should be bottling this weekend so I’m hoping we catch a lucky break.
Me: Sterilization is the key. Hopefully, you’ll get lucky. Home brewing requires a bit of patience. If your neighbor is a high energy type that requires instant gratification, this is NOT the hobby for him. But it might be better the next batch as you can goof around and drink what you made this time while working on the next one. Re: sterilizing buckets, spoons and such. Get yourself some liquid sterilizer if you haven’t already figured that one out. Super handy stuff and really easy to work with. I use a product called Star San Acid Sanitizer.
Kyle: I’ll try and find that sanitizer. I was planning to get away from the bleach solution… just worked in a pinch as the neighbor was hell bent on starting before we had everything we needed. The only place I’ve ordered from so far is beer-wine.com. That’s the site posted on Samuel Adams web site in the home brew contest section. They seem to have a decent variety of inventory and as far as I can tell, the prices look ok.
Me: That’s some website. Way more advanced than your typical home brew / home wine making type outfit. Looks like a pretty complete selection of stuff. The prices seem a little higher than what I’m used to walking into a store, but that’s life I guess if you don’t have access to a store. You might consider laying out a few recipes in advance, then buying all the stuff at once to save on shipping. Grains will keep for a long while as long as you don’t crack them. The liquid (“pitchable”) yeast should do okay in your fridge for quite a while as well. Ask about the hops, though, as I think it may lose potency over time… I don’t remember. I think if you get pellets rather than leaf the hops will last longer.

Kyle: How do you print your custom labels? I was thinking about Photoshop‘ing the labels, but do you buy sticker labels somewhere that are cut to the right dimensions?
Me: For new labels, you can buy them pre-cut at brew supply stores or go to an office supply store and find something with the right dimensions. Word of warning: most of the do-it-yerself labels DO NOT use the same adhesive the big breweries use to affix their labels. Unless you find something specifically for this application with water soluble adhesive, the labels will not be easy to remove down the road. Not that I’ve ever done this or anything . If you’re going to just do a few bottles as give-aways to friends and don’t expect the bottles to come back for re-use, that’s cool. Otherwise, you might want to skip this part. Instead, just use plain silver bottle caps. You can go after them with a Sharpie marker and put initials on the top to identify the goodies inside the bottle (e.g. PA = Pale Ale, AM = Amber, HW = Hefeweizen, etc).

Me: Hmm… all this typing is making me think I need to run to Boulder this weekend, get some supplies and make a batch. I might put up all this stuff on my blog as well (sensibly edited, of course).
Kyle: Yeah, you should blog this. You’ve sent some really good info. A lot of these steps are covered in the beginner books, but what has really helped is hearing your preferences and opinions and what has worked for you. The books might explain that your primary fermenter can be a carboy or bucket, but doesn’t really explain why one may work better than the other. I really wish we had a brew shop in town… hopefully we’ll have one before long. For our next run I’ll either order the exact ingredients I need for one particular batch or order another kit with all ingredients pre-measured. I’m not really stoked about storing ingredients long term.

MediaWiki… it’s alive! Sort of.

I managed to get MediaWiki running. It really didn’t turn out to be all that difficult. IF you know where to look for the instructions. I did get hung up on the very last step, but a quick IM with my guru Raghu sorted me right out. NaviGoGlobalWiki is now in production!

Unfortunately, it’s not accessible from anywhere besides my home. After working perfectly for hours last evening, connectivity into the machine hosting the Wiki is down. Again. Back to the Comcast vs DynDNS debate in earlier postings. After doing my usual troubleshooting, I decided to call Comcast. The first tech support person in the Residential H-S Internet team didn’t even know what I was talking about when I said “I’m running Ubuntu Linux on a PC in my basement and having trouble SSH’ing into the box.” So they sent me to the Workplace Business Services sales people who sent me to tech support on their side. That guy listened to my problem, then said he didn’t know why Residential sent me over since I wasn’t a Business customer. Back to Residential. The 3rd tech support person seemed to understand what I was trying to do, but went into their usual troubleshooting script. Power cycle everything, then remove my router from the equation by connecting my Linux PC directly to the cable modem. When we compared IP address on Linux PC to what Comcast could see for my cable modem, they didn’t match. Interesting (or maybe not so interesting if you actually know how the cable networks operate… I don’t).

In the end, Comcast told me to bring my cable modem in for testing or replace it. Great. Undeterred, I decided to try a different Dyanamic DNS provider. I signed up with No-IP, configured a DNS host in their database, then downloaded and configured their Linux client which has auto-NAT detection (No-IP receives the public side IP address for my router from the client, then populates it in their DNS records). No joy.

I guess I’ll run to Best Buy and get a new cable modem just to see what happens. Running out of ideas.

*UPDATE! Wed 13.Jun.07*

I am now the proud owner of one (1) Linksys WCG200 Wireless-G Cable Gateway. It’s a combo cable modem / WAP / router with the usual stuff like DHCP and a firewall. This gadget replaced my old Belkin F5D5530-W cable modem and Netgear WGR614 (v7) WAP / router. The install was a snap and after a quick call to Comcast to have them register the MAC address for the new device, I was in business again. After a little configuration work on port forwarding / port triggering, NaviGoGlobalWiki was once again reachable from the outside. And I could SSH into the box. After 12hrs of what I believe is continuous uptime, I think the problem is solved. I’ll declare victory after 48hrs… I’m using Site 24×7 to monitor the domain.

BTW… When I called into activate my MAC, I asked the Comcast tech what the IP address was for my device and he spit out 73.x.x.x. I looked at my WAN side IP and it was 24.x.x.x. Similar to the odd mismatch from the earlier call. However, I soon learned the 73.x.x.x address was on their Cable Modem Termination System (CMTS) facing my device and that they had no way of telling what IP address their DHCP engine had assigned my device when it registered. So when Comcast suggested replacing my cable modem because of the IP mismatch it seems to have been the correct fix, but that conclusion was clearly reached by accident. I’ll probably never know why my old Belkin cable modem was acting the way it was.

*UPDATE! Thu 14.Jun.07*

It never ends. I am now the disgusted owner of a Linksys WCG200 Wireless-G Cable Gateway. Or at least I was… read on. Yesterday, the morning after replacing my Belkin modem and Netgear WAP with the brand spankin’ new Linksys, my connection is down. I reboot the Linksys thinking maybe it’s something to do with that fact that it’s a new MAC and perhaps Comcast’s gear reset itself overnight or something. No idea. 4hrs later, it happens again. I look at the Linksys logs and see a bunch of entries that describe loss of signal / loss of sync / loss of connection with Comcast.

I call Comcast. Again. I get a tech that seems to know a little more than most, but things sort of drift during our conversation. He tells me it’s probably a power spike local to my location (e.g. in my house). Power spikes are very common, he says, when computers boot. Micro amps, he proclaims! If the Linksys isn’t getting enough power, it’ll fritz out, he opines. I see it at my house and bought a UPS to work around it, he recommends. I build nitrogen cooled supercomputers, he discloses. Call Linksys if it continues to happen, he commands. I move on. I did switch the power supply for the Linksys to another outlet with nothing else plugged into it, but probably on the same circuit as the other stuff, so pretty much pointless. At least it made me feel a little better.

This morning, the Linksys bit the dust again. I reset it again. Then the WAP part of the Linksys barfs and only my hardwired PCs have connectivity. What the hell!?!?! I wandered off to the Linksys support website to see if I can find any dirt. Buried in their forums I find a thread called “WCG200 dropping internet” and, right there on p.8 of the thread, I find the smoking gun: someone with the same log entries. I continue reading and see another, similar entry on p.9. Then I see another thread called ”WCG200 Cable Router loses internet, comes back when reset…” and skim it to find symptoms similar to what I’m experiencing. That’s enough for me. I tear my whole set-up apart and saunter back over to Best Buy where I acquired one (1) Motorola SURFboard SBG900 Wireless Cable Modem Gateway. I’ll let you know how it goes, but first impressions are that this is a helluva lot more machine than the Linksys. It has a lot of functionality I’ve never seen in a Netgear or Linksys, particularly around customization of the firewall.

*UPDATE! Fri 15.Jun.07*

The Motorola worked.  It took a while to work out all the kinks in the firewall settings, but I got it sorted and all my problems evaporated.  Hurray!

South Boulder Peak Ascent

Summer trail running season is in high gear here in Colorado. My buddy Randy and I have been making regular rounds of the trails near Eldorado Springs on Friday mornings. Last week, we decided to try something a little different: a climb up the tallest peak in the Flatirons. While it’s not exactly Mount Everest, South Boulder Peak checks in at 8,549ft with a respectable elevation rise of ~2,900ft above the valley floor. Since Randy and I thought this run might be of interest to others, we checked in with about a dozen folks that have run with us occasionally. Only Eric took up the challenge (or at least was motivated enough to meet us for the sunrise departure). One of those that declined is a very seasoned trail runner who only offered a suggestion that we bring oxygen. Ha! We were undeterred in our quest.

We set off from South Mesa Trailhead at about 5.20am and didn’t stop until we got to the top 70min later. The views were mighty impressive especially looking west towards the continental divide. After about 5min of hanging around at the top, we headed back down, reaching the parking lot 45min later (everyone had to go to work). All in all, a good choice, although it’s a very steep route and not exactly a candidate for your daily run. And bring a snack and an energy drink. My trusty Suunto t3 Heart Rate Monitor told me I burnt 1,767kcal going out n’ back.

Routes for Comparison	RT Distance	Summit	Vertical	Steepness
South Boulder Peak via Towhee / Shadow Canyon	6.8mi	8,549ft	2,904ft	854ft/mi
Longs Peak via Keyhole Route	14.0mi	14,255ft	5,100ft	729ft/mi
Mt Sanitas Loop	3.3mi	6,863ft	1,343ft	814ft/mi
Eldorado Mtn / Fowler / Rattlesnake Gulch	5.6mi	6,850ft	1,088ft	389ft/mi
Mesa / S Fork Shanahan / Mesa / Towhee	6.1mi	6,400ft	955ft	313ft/mi

BolderBOULDER07

Every year I try to do an athletic event of some sort that gives me a goal, an objective, a reason to work-out, a reason to bust off the flab. Last year it was the Colorado Marathon. This year, I haven’t really picked one yet despite a near religious fanaticism for the gym… pick two of the following each day: lifting, swimming, running or biking (typically 5days per week plus occasionally something on the weekend). So when I was invited to run BolderBOULDER07 by my sister Kris and her friend Gina (who also happens to be the mom of one of the girls my youngest daughter’s soccer team), I jumped at the chance. I hadn’t run it since 2002 and thought it would be fun. Run each year on Memorial Day, the BolderBOULDER is a world class event and one of the largest 10k races anywhere. This year there were over 50,000 runners and walkers registered. What makes BolderBOULDER somewhat unique is their wave starting system where they put you into groups of roughly 1,000 racers based on your projected finish time. Each group starts a couple minutes apart to give each pack a chance to break-up before the next wave rolls out. This allows you to race with others that will have a similar pace and makes it one of the better mega races to take a shot at an “official” PR.

Gina had never run a BolderBOULDER before and was shocked at its magnitude. It really is an amazing bit of logistics to close off 6mi of Boulder city streets (including major arteries like 30th, 28th, Pearl and Folsom), get 50,000 people lined up in the right spot, staff a half dozen aid stations, line up enough port-a-potties and then get everyone a goody bag and a beer at the end. Plus clean-up the whole thing and get the streets back open by late in the afternoon. Epic. Even though this year was the 29th running of the race and the organizers have had plenty of time to perfect their processes, it’s still a spectacular thing when you realize what it took to pull it off.

Long story made longer, I finished in just over an hour. I’m certain I could have run it much faster in my current state of tune, but this year it really was just for the experience and to enjoy the run with Kris and Gina. Unlike in the past when I pushed much harder and didn’t really observe much of what was going on, I really had fun checking out the bands, belly dancers, yard parties and random folks tempting you to pull off to the side (“LAST BACON STOP BEFORE THE FINISH LINE!!!!!”). All in all, a good time and I highly recommend this race to anyone who wants or needs to do a 10k.

Dave’s BolderBOULDER Race History
(I seem to be setting a trend in the wrong direction.)

Year	Bib Number	Last Name	First Name	Official Time	Age
2001	MM518	Fuller	David	00:54:25	30
2002	GG348	Fuller	David	00:47:31	31
2007	HD396	Fuller	David	01:03:02	36