2005 Bolder Boulder 10K

The US women did well in yesterday's Bolder Boulder 10K. Elva Dryer of Albuquerque, NM won with a time of 32:51 and the US women won the team event. The second place winner was Merima Hashim of Ethiopia. She finished with a time of 33:17. One thing I found interesting was that Hashim had run the night before at the Payton Jordan Invitational in Palo Alto, CA. Her finish time for that 10K event was 32:14. I wonder if the minute slowdown at Boulder is due to lack of recovery time, altitude, weather, or the course.

The top country for the Men's 10K was Ethiopia. Ethiopian Guidisa Shentama took first place with a time of 29:21 and Ethiopian Mohammed Awol took second place with a time of 29:27. The 29:21 winning time was the slowest winning time since 1994. The weather wasn't to blame. The temperature was 55°, 90% humidity with cloudly skies.

I found this DenverPost article to have the best race summary.

The cloudy and foggy skies seemed to put a damper on the post race events. There was no parachuting or fighter jet flyovers. Perhaps it affected the race participation. I've updated the stats that I did in may last post with the 2005 results. The number of finishers were down by about 3% from last year and down by about 5% from 2003 (based on finish numbers at Bolder Boulder Citizens Race Results).

Boulder seems to be a good place for road races in late May. For the last four races, it has always been in the low to mid fifties. With so little temperature variation, I don't think the changes to the top-100 mean finish times can be attributed to just the temperatures. The top-100 means for both the men and women improved this year over last year. The men were 15 seconds faster and the women were 19 seconds faster. It's interesting to note that 2005 looked very similar to 2002. Both had similar number of finishers, finish times were less than 8 seconds apart and both had the same temperature.

2005 and Previous 4 Years of Bolder Boulder 10K

Year	Total Finishers	M%/F%	Mean Top 100 (M)	Mean Top 100 (F)	Temp °F	Hum %
2005	42141	47%/53%	34:06	40:19	52°	94%
2004	43650	46%/54%	34:21	40:38	54°	41%
2003	44568	47%/53%	34:03	40:43	55°	91%
2002	42123	46%/54%	33:58	40:24	52°	75%
2001	40723	47%/53%	33:56	40:11	?	?

The above race stats are based on the 10K Citizens Race results (which excludes the professionals) from the Bolder Boulder 10K Race Results page. The weather stats are based on data from Weather Underground.

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