What: Bolder Boulder 10K Road Race
When: Monday
Where: Starts at 30th and Walnut Streets
More info: bolderboulder.com
With the Bolder Boulder happening this weekend, it’s time someone bucked up and told you what a pain in the ass you are when you run, buttercup.
You’re a hot mess in every 5K.
At the Bolder Boulder, organizers are doing everything they can to keep things running smoothly. With tens of thousands running, it’s like herding cats. But with music. And fewer hairballs.
You, however, are the antithesis to the attempts to control the chaos.
Worried this ‘you’ I’m referring to is actually you? Check to see whether you’re doing any of the following when you sign up for a run or walk:
Walk the middle
Walkers: Do you stroll four abreast through the middle of the course?
You’re like the hairball in my shower drain.
We’re all psyched you’re out there. (I’m also psyched I have hair to clog the drain in the first place.) But it’s best if you walk off to the side, and not across the entire course, preventing passage by the thousands of people behind you who want to run or just walk faster than you.
Seriously, it’s like a curly rodent living in my shower. Someone send the green version of Drano before I back up a city sewer.
Fling Gatorade
At the aid stations, you snag sips of Gatorade and then huck the rest like you’re throwing salt over your shoulder for good luck.
Bad luck for the next runner. Remember? There’s a bazillion people running?
I know you’re running your own race, and you run just for you, not for anyone else, rah rah empowerment.
I kid. That’s awesome — how you should run. Yay!
Not awesome: forgetting that the other runners might prefer to take a shower after the Bolder Boulder, not during, and not in the remnants of your sticky slurps.
Stop short
Your shoe is untied!
Stop immediately in the middle of the course to correct this problem, even if it causes a 62-runner pile-up in the middle of 19th Street.
(Barefoot runners, add this to your ‘benefits’ list, but only if you’ve never caused a pile-up because you ran over something sharp and it effing hurt.)
Elbows out
You run like a marionette controlled by Lindsay Lohan on a binge — arms and legs akimbo, wild, in denial that you need running rehab.
What’s more, you’re six feet tall. So when your elbows are zig-zagging about like a bee that snorted coke instead of honey (Lindsay), you’re landing black-eye jabs on poor little middle schoolers who just wanted to run with their families.
Don’t worry. That middle schooler’s going to spray you down with Gatorade at the next aid station. Enjoy your run, Cap’n Stickylegs.