ROTG 2011 in the Books

The first race of the season is over, for a lot of us with the 23rd annual ROTG in downtown Denver. This years event drew more than 4,000 runners and offered several changes including:

• A new corral start
• An additional short hill between miles 2 and 3
• A short finishing stretch rather than last years longer flat finish

I’m interested in your thoughts on the course change, which I give high marks. I definitely should have done some recon on the finish line. L

I found the course changes to be challenging.

I liked the corral start, but would have preferred a designator letter similar to the Bolder Boulder. Like others, I wasn’t sure how quickly the first corral would fill up so I arrived plenty early to guarantee a spot in it. This gave me more than an hour of standing around waiting which was a big negative.

The course itself is pretty fast. After starting on 17^th street heading East for a couple of blocks, the course turns left on Market-heading north. The first mile has a little uphill and down but seems to be generally fast. There is plenty of room to pass (or to be passed) which is a huge plus for any race.

Heading uphill on 29th to Mile 2 is challenging. There were plenty of runners like me who  looked forward to cresting and enjoying the downhill to come.

New for this year was the continued downhill and a sharp turn to the South out by REI sports. Coming downhill I kept thinking about going back up but decided to run hard anyway. I managed ok on the uphill climb and headed North again on Central Street towards 20th.

One part of the course that was a little tricky was the merging of runners with the un-timed walkers on the two mile out and back. The potential 20^th street chaos seemed to be well managed, save for a couple of small children who weaved their way through a couple of runners in front of me.

Once past the merging section (again wide lanes of 20^th street were quite helpful) I shifted gears and headed for the finish. I would have preferred to have a strong kick but managed to complete the course a mere 7 seconds of my goal time.

So I left downtown Denver slightly disappointed that I just missed out on my goal time (sub 30 minutes) but very happy for another great running experience. See you next time!