Bolder Boulder's history defines 10k races

This year’s Bolder Boulder will be the 38^th run on the streets of Boulder.

“I wanted to put on a community event -- a track meet for kids,” said race founder Steve Bosely. “So I went to my friend Frank Shorter and said, here's what I want to do and he said, ‘Why don’t we put on a road race?’”

Co-founder Frank Shorter is an Olympic gold medalist. He remembers the early days in the late 1970s when the Bolder Boulder only attracted serious runners.

“It was very competitive. People were running for time, for personal records,” Shorter said.

But then came 1983 and the invention of the Bolder Boulder’s famous wave start.

“The waves, nobody does it the way we do anywhere in the world,” he adds. “So you can get as many people as possible out there running freely."

Now everyone can run, jog or walk at their own pace.

By 2004, the Bolder Boulder was the largest timed 10k in the world with nearly 48,000 runners.

This year, more than 50,000 are expected to follow the route to Folsom Field.