When the University of Colorado announced 18 months ago it was going forward with facilities upgrades in and around Folsom Field, Bolder Boulder organizers weren’t sure how it might ultimately affect the race.
With the 2015 race now in the rearview, race director Cliff Bosley said Tuesday the slight reconfiguration of the very end of the course that resulted from the construction project probably gave the race a better finish line.
Bosley said the finish line this year was about 30 yards north of where it had been in the past, producing a little bit of a straightaway for runners after rounding the bend in the south end of the stadium.
“I think we have a better finish line,” Bosley said. “We were able to even out the turn there in the south end and it’s not so awkward. It wasn’t quite as gentle a curve and then we have a longer straightaway, which I think is better for the participants, better for overall competition and better for fans watching.”
One week before this year’s Bolder Boulder, race officials saw how torn up Stadium Drive was because of the ongoing construction and wondered if they would even be able to use that final leg of the course to get runners into the stadium.
CU and its design builder, Mortenson, had Stadium Drive cleared sufficiently by Friday, allowing the course to be officially measured and certified and there were no problems with that area for runners on race day.
The Bolder Boulder has handled the challenges posed by stadium construction three separate times spanning six of the 35 races in which it has finished in the stadium. So dealing with it again this year was nothing new, but Bosley is looking forward to 2016 when construction in and around Folsom Field will be done and not part of his pre-race checklist.
“Without a new Stadium Drive, we wouldn’t be looking at those things,” Bosley said. “So I think we ended up with a better product, but for next year it will be nice not to have that before the event.”
Figuring out no-shows
Every year the Bolder Boulder plans for around a 9 percent no-show rate, but the rate has jumped to double digits for three consecutive years now.
This year, there were 52,015 registrations and 46,542 finishers, an 11 percent no-show rate.
Bosley said post-race survey answers in 2013 from people who registered but didn’t run showed the biggest reason for not participating that year was fear from the bombings at the Boston Marathon earlier that year.
Bosley said he expects the race’s “GauRUNtee” promotion has played a part in higher no-show numbers last year and this year. The race instituted a policy beginning in 2014 that if a registered runner couldn’t do the race for any reason, they could carry their registration forward to the next year for just $15.
“I think that is playing in to these numbers, but to what degree? I’m not sure,” Bosley said.
Bosley said he believes the guarantee remains a good idea and has been well received. There are no plans to rethink it even if it is contributing to a small increase in the number of no-shows each year.
Another issue Bosley said he knows is skewing the numbers is people running the race without their timing tags. Bosley said the race discovered last year that 1.5 to 2 percent of participants were running without their timing tags. The discovery was made when the company that takes photographs of each finisher submitted more finisher photographs than the timing system had counted.
“There is part of me that thinks people don’t want to be scored,” Bosley said.
Bosley said the race might have to consider mandating that every runner wear a timing tag in order to participate because the tags can be extremely valuable to helping locate people when they become separated with loved ones or in other unusual circumstances.
“It’s a good mechanism to track people who need to be reunited,” Bosley said. “We want people to wear the tags for a lot of reasons, scoring being the primary, but it allows us to better serve the participant in terms of finding people and medical emergencies, too.”
Kyle Ringo: ringok@dailycamera.com, on Twitter: @kyleringo
