The Choice City Running Festival (fka Fort Collins Human Race) is back at Civic Center Park with classic race courses and the Friday evening Jane Welzel Mountain Avenue Mile and the Human Race 5K, 10K and Half Marathon on Saturday. The Half Marathon will take you on a unique Tour …
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The Choice City Running Festival (fka Fort Collins Human Race) is back at Civic Center Park with classic race courses and the Friday evening Jane Welzel Mountain Avenue Mile and the Human Race 5K, 10K and Half Marathon on Saturday.
The Half Marathon will take you on a unique Tour of Town! Run from downtown Fort Collins to a corridor of nature that cuts through the city in a peaceful path along the Cache la Poudre River. Travel among historic neighborhoods, past a whitewater park, through the brewery district, and over and under bridges on a tree-lined course offering a choice of paved path or crushed gravel.
The 10K is the sweet spot for distance and this course is the perfect route to set your new 10K PR. Enjoy a big loop route that mysteriously sandwiches downhill miles in the middle with fast and flat miles at both the start and finish as you cruise through the city, the country, and along the banks of the river! Great course for both runners and walkers.
Man vs Machine: Running along Fort Collins’ historic Mountain Avenue is the perfect setting for the 5k “Race Against the Trolley” challenge. Toe the line with Birney Car 21 as you race up and down Mountain’s flat & fast course to see if you’ve got what it takes to outrun the trolley! Everyone welcome – walk, jog, run, or race. Faster than Flat!
Run the Mountain Avenue Mile on Friday evening to kick off your running weekend with the “faster-than-flat” downhill point-to-point one-mile event. Open to everyone and featuring multiple waves (Elite, Citizens, Kids, Masters, pushrim/wheelchair). Pair it with one of the Human Race distances on Saturday morning for two days or racing fun.
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Mile markers off
Needed CO for round 2 of 50 states, this happened to work with my schedule so signed up. Course is flat as a pancake but at elevation (I live at … MORE
Needed CO for round 2 of 50 states, this happened to work with my schedule so signed up. Course is flat as a pancake but at elevation (I live at same so didn’t hurt, may hurt if you’re a flat lander, it’s at ~5000 the whole time). Course starts downtown Ft Collins and runs to the river trail. Once on the trail, the first mile-ish is dirt/rock, then back to paved, then for mile 6-7 ish is dirt around a lake, then since it’s out and back, paved, dirt, ending paved street. For the first half, the mile markers were short by 0.1 (everyone around me agreed). Then, around the lake, my watch said 7mi but the marker wasn’t there so I thought they just didn’t have one on the lake. Turns out, the mile markers for the return half were long by 0.3 (again, everyone around me was the same). A tree had fallen on the course and they routed us around it but it was a tiny uphill, downhill thing that wouldn’t have added distance. The course was just measure incorrectly. I ran pretty decent tangents and ended up at 13.3 to finish the race. It’s a small production with <120 people running the half. The age groups say they are 10y but they gave awards in the normal age smaller age groups (nice mugs). The shirts are nice cotton ones and the medal was just meh, but better than you would normally get for a small scale production. Plenty of free parking downtown since parking enforcement doesn't start will 8 and you have 2 free hours (race is supposed to start at 6:30 but it was delayed till 6:45 for some reason). Pancake breakfast at finish was nice. Not going to complain, it was nice, friendly people, pretty course.
A really great course
Great small race with a super scenic course and an awesome town to visit - Fort Collins!! Easy parking, fun post race area. Highly recommend this race MORE
Great small race with a super scenic course and an awesome town to visit – Fort Collins!! Easy parking, fun post race area. Highly recommend this race
Unseasonably Hot, Small Race
The Fort Collins Human Race lined up perfectly with my schedule, as I was booked to stay in Denver, Colorado, for a week for a professional conference. The race was … MORE
The Fort Collins Human Race lined up perfectly with my schedule, as I was booked to stay in Denver, Colorado, for a week for a professional conference. The race was at the end of my trip, which gave me a week to get acclimated and ensure I was adjusted to the altitude. This race, celebrating its 39th year, took place on August 6th, 2022.
According to my weather app, it was 68° F at the start of the race, with an expected high of 77° F, and no wind. These conditions were a bit warmer than what I’d normally consider ideal for a half marathon, but it did not seem like it would be terrible since there was no humidity and no wind. What ended up actually happening as far as the temperature was an entirely different story, because the temperature on the course was an average of 84° F and we experienced blistering hot temps that at one point reached 95° F according to my Garmin – which is unseasonably hot for Fort Collins even in August.
Green Events Colorado, the race organizers, touted this race as “a beautiful, scenic and mostly shady, relatively flat course.” I concur with all but the “mostly shady” part, because my experience was the opposite. The course was in fact very beautiful, and mostly flat, but it consisted of sun, heat and elemental exposure most of the time, with the exception of a few shady patches that provided much relief from the sweltering, unobstructed sun on that hot, cloudless day. This would have been an extremely delightful, wonderful race course in the fall, with autumn temperatures and fall foliage.
The race began and ended on Mountain Avenue at Civic Center Park, and we started the course heading west on Mountain Avenue precisely at 7:00 A.M. What was most surprising to me was how small this race was. For a race in its 39th year, I expected a fairly decent crowd, but the field of runners was only 130 for the half marathon, and maybe 200 runners all together for all three events that morning. There was no crowd support, it was only runners and a small group of enthusiastic volunteers cheering one another on throughout the course.
From Mountain Avenue we headed to Grandview, then north on Taft Hill Road to the Poudre River Trail. This course was net downhill overall, and I was extremely delighted to find the first 2 miles were a nice gradual downhill mostly in the shade of downtown Fort Collins. I can’t remember a single uphill throughout the course – it was either flat, or downhill. I was mindful of my breathing, maintaining a really good pace considering the conditions, and I had the goal of simply completing the race, enjoying the scenery, and not going to the hospital for heat exhaustion or dehydration. I was feeling really good until we got onto the trail, and we were exposed to the heat and sun the rest of the course as the morning progressed.
Just before the trail went under Timberline road, there was a turnaround for the course at mile 9. At some point after mile 10, I hit the fork in the road, and went the wrong direction because it was not properly marked, and there were no other runners in sight to point us in the right direction. I was with a volunteer who was equally as confused, and we walked about a quarter mile off course, which of course added extra time to my finish. At that point I considered my finish time a wash, and felt I would be lucky to just finish and not go to the hospital, as symptoms of heat exhaustion started to creep in.
At each of the aid stations I pounded 3 to 4 cups of water and 1 cup of electrolyte mix, but it didn’t feel like enough, even after hydrating all week. I was kicking myself for not bringing my own hydration system to supplement what was offered on the course. Typically I am accustomed to water about every 2 miles with larger races, but because this was a smaller race, the course was a bit less supported. Each aid station had water, Nuun electrolyte drink, and first aid supplies. Portable toilets were also located at the aid stations, though I didn’t take the time to actually notice them or need them because I was focused on hydration.
At the finish line, a photographer snapped high-quality free finisher photos, which were available for download after the race on the event Facebook page. Because I traveled from out of town, race day packet pickup was my best option. I arrived about 50 minutes prior to the race, and picked up my packet, which consisted of my race bib, a cotton tank top with the race logo, electrolyte mix, and some business cards and pamphlets for local businesses. All of this was neatly folded into a disposable paper bag, in keeping with the theme of a “green event.” There was no gear check, so I had to make a decision and discard what I couldn’t run with.
Overall I was surprised with how small this race was, though I suspect prior to the pandemic, this was an event that used to have a fairly decent turnout. I was happy to check Colorado off my list in my quest to run a half in all 50 states.