On Monday morning, Emad Bashir-Mohammed thought he had won the Bolder Boulder.
He had crossed the finish line first in the men’s citizen’s race at the 46th edition of the Memorial Day 10K, clocking 29 minutes and 50 seconds on the boards inside Folsom Field, according to reporting from Brian Howell at the Daily Camera. Then, the race officials told him he had been disqualified.
The reason: Bashir-Mohammed had been assigned to the AA wave but lined up with the A wave, which started earlier. Under Bolder Boulder rules, runners can move back to a slower wave but never up to a faster one.
That ruling, the Daily Camera reported, handed the title to Nickolas Scudder, who finished eight seconds behind in 29:58. Scudder is now the official back-to-back champion and only the second runner in the citizen’s race’s 46-year history to break 30 minutes. Kenyan runner Simon Cheprot, the 2009 pro winner, was the first, in 29:14 — a time that puts both runners well clear of elite benchmarks like sub-35.
“It’s a pretty cool feeling,” Scudder told the Daily Camera at the finish. “Not maybe the way I thought it would happen, but I’ll take it. That’s pretty cool to do.”
Scudder, who ran collegiately at Charlotte before graduating in 2024 and moved to Boulder later that summer, won last year’s race in 30:03. He shaved five seconds off that time this year despite warmer conditions on the course.
“We don’t have a nice drizzle this year,” he told the Daily Camera. “It’s a little warmer, but I’ll take a PR on this course. For altitude, it’s a pretty good time.”
Scudder is the first runner to win the men’s citizen’s race in consecutive years since Sammy Ngatia in 1999 and 2000.
For most of the race, Scudder led. Bashir-Mohammed pulled level on the climb leading into Folsom Field and edged ahead before the finishing straight.
“I like to think I’m a good front-runner, but definitely going on those last two miles he was pushing me,” Scudder told the Daily Camera. “He was tucked in right on my heels, so I guess he was pushing in the sense of, like, the fear of losing, but it was good. It was definitely good to have somebody because no one started fast this year, so I was glad. Even if they’re sitting on me, I was glad to have him right there.”
The bib mix-up
Bashir-Mohammed, a Sudan native who graduated from George Washington High School in Denver in 2018, has only been running competitively for about six years. He ran in college at the University of Saint Mary in Kansas and has built a strong résumé on the Colorado road racing circuit since. On May 17, he won the Colfax Half Marathon in Denver for the third year in a row.
Until this year, the Bolder Boulder had been a spectator event for him. He told the Daily Camera he had attended the past four years to watch the pro race and study how elite runners move through the course.
In an Instagram post on Monday night, Bashir-Mohammed described how he ended up at the front of the wrong wave. Writing on his @emadinho_mohammed account, he said that when he picked up his bib, organizers told him they had run out of A wave bibs and assigned him an AA number instead. He said he showed them proof of his recent times and was told he was cleared to run with the A wave.
“I mean let’s be honest, I paid to run with the fastest people! And Run Fast Times,” he wrote on Instagram. “So 2hrs later I got a call saying they will DQed me because I started in the wrong Wave. Technically I was supposed to wait and let the A wave start and then go chase them.”
Andy Martin, a Bolder Boulder spokesperson, told the Daily Camera that hundreds of runners are disqualified at the race every year for moving up in waves. The rule is communicated to participants in their pre-race emails and at packet pickup.
Speaking to the Daily Camera before he learned of the disqualification, Bashir-Mohammed had played down his expectations going into the race.
“I didn’t know much about it,” he told the paper. “I just come out and watch the pro race and enjoy the Memorial weekend sort of thing. I’m new to running; I started running, like, basically six years ago, and 2022 was the first time watching a professional race. I just come watch, learn, experience from the professionals and stuff. See how they move.”
He told the Daily Camera he plans to come back to the Bolder Boulder next year and also to defend his Colfax title.
The Bolder Boulder is one of the largest road races in the United States. This year drew roughly 51,000 runners across 95 separate wave starts, with the time-trial-style citizen’s waves leaving in the morning and the professional fields running later in the day. Wave assignment is based on submitted qualifying times, and runners who register late often find themselves bumped a slot back, regardless of their recent results.
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