Bolder Boulder 10k 2011 Countdown...interview with Steve Bosley Part One

The 33^rd annual Bolder Boulder 10k is less than a month away.

The race is one the most successful races in the country and highlights the racing calendar for me along with thousands of other runners and walkers.

I’ve always said that the event is the most seamless race I have entered—it’s the only race on my calendar where my only concern is how fast I can run. 

All of the other details such as registration, course safety, accuracy of timing and distance, results, post race food and expo, plus much more, are simply first class. 

Bar none.

The Bolder Boulder is on the short list of must do races for runners along with such classics as The Peachtree Road Race (Atlanta on the 4^th of July) and of course The Boston Marathon.  Runners travel from all of the world to race here in Boulder on Memorial day.

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I sat down over breakfast recently with race founder Steve Bosley to learn more about the race. Bosely is a runner, and a successful businessman. He has combined his business acumen with a lifelong passion for running to create the signature event of the running season for many of us. Bosely talked at length about the history of the race, the course changes for this year, and what he sees in the future for the event.

Tho-run: Talk about the history of the race, how did it come about, when did you decide to organize a road race?

Steve Bosley: I’ll give you the history. It’s quite interesting. It was President Lincoln who said something like victory has a thousand fathers and defeat is an orphan, or something like that. Here’s the story. I’ve always loved athletics. My father was a coach. I participated in a lot of sports but was not outstanding in any. I ran mostly for fitness. My father had a heart attack at age 50 and he died at 60, so I was running from heart disease. At the time, my five children were in track programs. I would go to the track meets and I was so disgusted with the coaches and parents, I decided I was going to put on a track meet—but I was going to keep the coaches and parents in the stands!

I knew Frank Shorter who won the gold medal at the 1972 Olympics in the marathon. I told him I wanted to organize a track meet for runners. Shorter told me that a track meet has lots and lots of events-you want to run a road race. So I asked him (laughing) —what’s a road race? This was in February of 1979.

So I’d go to races along the Front Range each weekend, as many as I could find. I studied the races and what I found was six or seven things that you really needed to do to take care of your customer. I called the racers customers because I felt that if my event did not do a good job of keeping those runners/customers happy, they would never come back and pay an entry fee to run in my event.

I was President of the Bank of Boulder and called a staff meeting and said we are going to put on a road race. We are going to take all of things, and this is no meant as disrespect to clubs or groups that put on running events, but we are going to take all of those things and do them better than anyone else and run this race correctly just like it was our business. There were so many things that were not being done—take age groups for example. Most races have 12 and under, 13-17, and so 17-20 and so on. Well how can a nine year old race a twelve year old? Or what about a 45 year old racing someone who is 23? It just doesn’t work. So I said lets do it by age. And that first year we gave away ten places! And we have a number of people who tell us each year that they love the race because of the age groupings by year. It’s just one of the many things we identified as being essential to making the race a first class experience for everyone—runners, sponsors, the city, everyone. And there are others too.

Tho-Run: It would seem that being a sponsor of the Bolder Boulder would be a really great opportunity for a company. But it wasn’t as easy as just going out and singing up some names. The sponsorship developed over time didn't it?

Steve Bosley:  If you do things right and take care of people, this is the thing. This is true for runners and sponsors. They just come back. You know it’s interesting that our race became such a big race in Colorado, it could have been born much earlier. There were some other races at the time like the run for the roses that was put on by Leo Palmer who owned a flower shop. As a sidebar I went to him and said I want to put on a race but I don’t want to think we are competing, you are in the fall and I’ll be in the spring—do you want to join forces? In fact, I went to five businesses that first year and said would you join me in putting on a road race? And not one of them said yes.   I say to our sponsors that out of those five business I went to, only one of them survived, the rest of them died. My bank was the one that made it-and so now I say to sponsors now that it’s obvious to me that you are going to be successful if you sponsor the Bolder Boulder!! 

We came back the second year by the way, and some of those companies said hey we want to join you now. And there were a number of lucky things that happened along the way for our race, and one of them was I said no we are going to do this on our own. We were a small business bank and the agonies of partnerships falling apart was enough to give us pause. We decided not to sell any sponsorships because we really didn’t know what we should sell them for or what the sponsors would get out of it. We just decided to pay for it all again and wanted to do things right first –we wanted to lay the foundations first—we wanted to more than just collecting money. we wanted our sponsors to be our partners—

Tho-Run: We all see the banners along the course or at the post race expo for BB of the participating companies, but partnership is an overused term in business. How does it work for the race?

 

Steve Bosely: Oh it goes so deep. Much of it is not even obvious on the surface. First would be finding the right companies tat we can give them their monies worth for what they spend. We’ve gone to sponsors before and said we don’t think you are getting your monies worth for what you are spending. We will let you out of your contract. In most circles that is unheard of. But I think why have someone on board who is unhappy and talks to others about how unhappy they are? You know what? I’d rather have a company say hey you know what this company came to us and said hey we want to let you out of your contract with us and we are ok with that, that is the way you should do business. Laying that piece and then really taking care of the runners—from how do you learn about the race, how do you register, is the course accurate, how close is your chip time vs. the time you had, the course entertainment, even the mile markers, and finally what is your post race experience?  We just think we’ve got to keep plussing it up.Your paying for an experience. We think of all those things and more and we think of them from a sponsors perspective-that all makes for a good start to a sponsorship package.

Tho-Run: I just cant help but thinking there must have been a little bit of luck in getting the race on the right course. What sticks out in your mind as something that was fortunate that you maybe didn’t see at the time?

Steve Bosley: The biggest race in the Rocky Mountain Area should not be in Boulder, Colorado. It should be in Denver. Well, we were blessed at the time that the Denver Parks and Recreation charged a lot for a race. You know there was a big race under Governor Lamm who was also a runner, but we were really fortunate. The Denver races were big but they never really took off over time.

We had a group lay out a course for us one year that seemed to be a pretty good one.  We changed the course a little bit but that wasn’t a big deal. Anyway, lets see two weeks before the race, I said how’s the parade permit? I’d like to see the parade permit. 

Well guess what? We  did not have permission from the city to put on a race. So I went down to city hall. I really did not know anyone there at the time. And they said nope, no way there is not enough time. Sorry. 

And I met one fellow, I believe his name was Andy, I think he was public works and I said boy are we really in trouble, and he said yes you really are in trouble. And he said let me see what you’ve got and I’ll think about it. He was gone for about 15-20 minutes, and when he came back he had a parade permit. 

This guy he wasn’t, I mean he didn’t work for the city very long. His way of doing things didn’t work in a bureaucracy. We would not have had the race that year without that permit. Maybe we would have had it the next year, you know though when you’ve got the momentum going and you lose that-and we had enough participation and everything that we decided to go to the city for the next year right then. And we told them we think there are things we can change. Since then, we’ve included the city in our planning every year.