Two years ago, Aidan Reed ran the Bolder Boulder for the first time but chose to take it easy and jog throughout the 10K race.
On Monday, he came to win and did just that.
The Helena, Mont., native who has lived in Boulder for nearly three years won the men’s citizen’s race at the 44th Bolder Boulder. He finished in 30 minutes, 2 seconds — marking the third-best winning time in race history.
“Yeah, I was hoping to win,” he said. “I raced the U.S. Olympic marathon trials a few months ago and it didn’t go very well. After this, my plan is to race a 10,000-meter race in Portland to try and get the trials qualifier for 10,000. So this was like a good fitness check.”
Ryder Searle finished second, in 30:40, while Pat Smyth was third, in 30:47.
The only winners to finish faster than Reed were Simon Cheprot in 2009 (29:14) and Barnabas Kosgei in 2017 (30:00).
A former standout at Southern Utah University, Reed, 26, majored in political science and got a master’s in public administration, but didn’t want to stop running after his career at SUU.
“I wanted to run professionally, so I looked at a couple of different teams and I like Boulder,” he said.
He joined the Roots Running Project team and was one of several Roots runners to compete Monday.
Next year, Reed said, he would love to be a part of the Bolder Boulder’s International Pro Team Challenge. But, he was thrilled with his first competitive race at the Bolder Boulder.
“It’s cool,” he said. “It’s a good fitness check. It was very cool experience. It was fun to see the community come out.
“It’s a challenging course. You have to know how to run it. I think it’s a course where the more you run it the better you get at it. I enjoyed it. It was cool.”
Searle, 28, is from Pagosa Springs and ran collegiately at Colorado Christian University. Like Reed, he competed at the U.S. Olympic marathon trials in February.
Smith, 37, is from Salt Lake City. After retiring from competition in 2020, he returned in 2023.
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