Race Review - Colfax Relay Marathon

The Colfax Marathon (http://www.runcolfax.org) is a pretty popular race around these parts. Colfax is the longest continuos avenue in America, and runs from the foothills of Golden, out past the plains of Aurora. It probably also has the highest concentration of seedy bars, pawn shops, liquor stores and homeless people in the state. It runs beside some famous landmarks such as the Broncos' Mile High Stadium and the ever popular tourist trap, Casa Bonita.

Several race lengths are available, from the full and half marathon, down to a 5k sprint. I was conscripted to run the relay marathon with some co-workers, in which teams of 6 break up the 26.2 miles into legs ranging from 3.7 to 6.4 miles. I was assigned the 3rd leg, which was 6 miles and sported some decent elevation gain.

Relay legs.

The course for the relay varies slightly, so as not to muck up the full marathon runners. There's a timing chip in the baton, and it is handed off at locations where people line up according to bib numbers to await their teammates, and some poor bastard gets the never-ending job of calling out the bib numbers of approaching runners.

My leg began at Sloan's lake, which is a couple blocks off of Colfax, headed straight to the main street and began to head west up the hill. We veered off Colfax and run through Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design, wound through the neighborhood, up another decent hill, where several people were in their front yards handing out food and drink for the folks putting in the big miles. Finally the course descended back down to the avenue to a quick finish off to the north side of the street.

Go time.

Post race you can hop the RTD bus, for free, back down to your starting area to get to your car or to the big post race party at Civic Center Park. With over 17,000 runners this year, it was easily the biggest race I've been in to date. It's super organized, well laid out and captures a good portion of Denver along the route.

I came in at 53 minutes and change, for my leg, and our team time was 4:03:58, placing us at 351 (out of 937) for Relay and 90th (out of 215) for co-ed class.

Finisher medal/paper weight.