I'm not a womens, and I actually live in Denver, but I DO work in Boulder. It's absolutely terrific. I'm very much a MOPer triathlete, and I don't belong to any Boulder tri clubs or teams. The #1 thing about Boulder is that you can't beat the training here. Great things include:

1. Training at altitude. Virtually anywhere else you race, you'll feel like superman.
2. Variety of terrain - Mountains to the west; some rollers just east of the foothills; flats on the eastern plains. It doesn't get any better.
3. Very active outdoor lifestyle. Almost everyone in Boulder lives a very healthy lifestyle, whether or not they're triathletes, runners, cyclists, etc.
4. Skiing in the winter / riding in the fall, spring & summer (actually, you might even be able to ride outside a bit in the winter)
5. The people are terrific, although some are a bit quirky in Boulder proper
6. Plenty of group rides/tri teams & clubs/cycling teams & clubs.
7. Great master's swimming program (Boulder Area Masters aka BAM)
8. the Bolder Boulder 10K

I wish I could get my wife to move closer to Boulder, but we do love our Denver neighborhood, and she works in downtown Denver.

On the CON list, Boulder is a fairly expensive place to live. Plenty of towns around Boulder are much more affordable, though (Erie, Superior, Broomfield, Longmont, etc.). You'll have no problem meeting people in the Tri and cycling world. Most are very down to earth.

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Steve Perkins

Holy crap, holy crap, pack your crap RIGHT NOW and make the move. Boulder is AMAZING. I'm from here and I just dropped my 6 figure jb in Phoenix to move home to Boulder. I LOVE IT!!!!!!

There are few places in this country that can match Boulder for what it has to offer and how beautiful it is.

Do it now... and drop me a line when you get here, we'll take ya'll out and show you around.

I am hoping to move there over the winter also. lets keep the posts going!

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"What am I on? I'm on my bike busting my ass for six hours a day. What are YOU on?" - Lance Armstrong

Huh, that's funny. I'm in Austin right now which is pretty great, but I'm kind of itching to try somewhere else for awhile and Boulder is definitely at the top of the list.

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We moved to the Boulder area last summer and it was BY FAR one of the best decisions we ever made!!!!! I LOVE IT here and never want to leave!! :)

I will say this tho, while a lot of people move here for the awesome training opportunities, we actually strayed farther from the sport once we got here because there are SO MANY other things to do. Hiking, mountain biking, skiing, rock climbing, etc. have made Ironman a distant memory and I have NO desire to spend all of my time training when there are so many other fun things to do. We have recently been on a 14er kick and its every bit as addictive as triathlon!!

Where did you move from?

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We moved from Lawrence, KS.

Well shoot, nearly anyplace would be better than Lawrence. ;-)

As for Boulder, I visited for the first time in May. It was nice, but there is no ocean. I'd hate it in the winter.

clm, Kansas State grad

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clm
Nashville, TN
https://twitter.com/ironclm | http://ironclm.typepad.com

  
pffffthhhh .... Lawrence is like a mini-Boulder or Austin or Madison (but without the mountains, Texans, or cows). You're just jealous that Manhattan can't even come CLOSE to rivaling the coolness that is Larryville!! ;)

ETA: I actually have a hard time trash talking KState ... no hard feelings there. Now, if you were a Mizzou grad that would be a different story entirely ...

HA! And if you were a Sooner, well, we wouldn't be speaking. ;-)

I was indoctrinated into the Purple pretty much from day 1.

clm

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clm
Nashville, TN
https://twitter.com/ironclm | http://ironclm.typepad.com

Since you're from Lawrence, which appealed to you more before you moved to Boulder: Austin or Boulder? I'm curious because I live in Austin now.

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Boulder. We CHOSE to move to Boulder - didn't move here for school, a job, etc. Austin has always been on the short list of places I would like to live but I absolutely HATE the heat and LOVE the mountains so Boulder was the clear winner. We moved here at a time when both my fiance and I were sort of getting out of the triathlon thing and looking for new endeavors - I think Austin is probably just as good for triathlon training opportunities but for the other things we wanted to do it didn't come close. We moved here for the proximity to the mountains, skiing, mountain biking, and hiking. And did I mention that I **HATE** the heat? ;) Honestly, I have wanted to live in Colorado for as long as I can remember and when we decided to move to where we wanted to live (not to where work or school took us), the Boulder area was the clear choice. And living here has been EVEN BETTER than I had hoped it would be.

I've actually never been to Austin but from what I understand the mentality of the towns is pretty similar - wacky, liberal, college towns with equal numbers of hippies and hardcore athletes. Those things can all be good or bad depending on your point of view. There are plenty of people who HATE Boulder for all the reasons that I love it.

I'm not sure what the cost of living is like in Austin but I can't imagine its cheap. That is one of the major downfalls of Boulder and the reason we live outside the city.

Man thoughts and opinions are changing in my old age. A few years ago, I was all about huge cities and couldn't stand the cold. Now, I'm leaning towards smaller towns and I can appreciate a brisk morning. You are right in that Austin is wacky, liberal, college towns with equal numbers of hippies and hardcore athletes. Last weekend, I was going out and I saw some guy walking his bike down the street wearing nothing but a teeny tiny red thong and flip flops. And that isn't the weirdest thing I've seen here. Oh, how about the car covered in Astroturf!

I'm a wuss when it comes to the cold, but I'm also sick of 5 months of 100 degree weather. Also, I like wearing sweaters and I don't get to do that enough here. I've never lived near the mountains, but I've always wanted to have either the mountains or the ocean and Austin has neither. I could probably get used to the cold though. One of my best friends grew up in Tampa and could bitch about the cold when it got below 65 degrees. Her and her husband now live in Missoula, MT and she absolutely loves the winter there. I'm completely shocked but if she could learn to love the cold, so could I.

I'm kind of stuck in a rut at the moment and I'm just looking for other cool places to potentially move to. I'm not actively looking to move (yet) but if an opportunity arises to move to Boulder/Denver, Portland, or Eugene, I would probably not hesitate to move.

Oh, and Austin is damn cheap compared to Boulder. I bought a house about 15 minutes from downtown for $122k 3 years ago. My house has appreciated considerably in those 3 years though. If moved anywhere, I would likely get an apartment for 1-2 years and eventually get a house (hopefully) somewhere. I really like having "my place" and my garage. It is just a sense of pride and empowerment with me owning my own house.

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Eric,

It is possible to find an affordable house near Boulder (just not in Boulder). There are a lot of smaller communities within 30 miles of Boulder that have some housing in the $150k range. It won't likely be as big as what you probably have now in Austin, but it's there. Just takes some looking, some lowering of expectations, and some vision for what you can turn the house into.

Plus, property taxes in Colorado are MUCH lower than in Texas. Steveperx will tell you that when he moved from Dallas to Denver, he bought a house that was probably 1 1/2 times as expensive as the one he had in Dallas and pays around a quarter of the property taxes, and, his actual mortgage payment didn't go up very much.

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''The enemy isn't conservatism. The enemy isn't liberalism. The enemy is bulls**t.''

—Lars-Erik Nelson

It's obvious that you haven't seen my current house. It was a mild to moderate fixer upper at only 1360 sq ft. As I told you on Saturday, I'm just kind of getting an idea of what else is out there because I'm getting the itch for a change in scenery.

Also, I don't enjoy having to put $350/mo into a savings account to pay my own property taxes and insurance.

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Yeah. I'm good enough for you to kick around on Slowtwitch, but I never get the invite to the house! ;)


You can find that kind of thing in Thornton and maybe Westminster, CO, both of which are not a bad drive from Boulder. Plus, you would probably get an unfinished basement that you could fix up later to add square footage to the house. No basements here in Austin.


Me too. Love Austin, but I've been here 10 years and the prospects for advancement at the AG's Office aren't stellar, as I'm as high as I'm gonna go until my boss leaves, and he ain't going anywhere soon. Private practice is not my bag and the (non-government) in-house jobs here are scarce unless you've either got a lot of experience with one of the big private law firms (I don't) or are willing to take on a lot more accountability for a very meager pay increase (been there, done that, don't wanna do it again). Good thing I have a smarter, more successful brother in Boulder. Maybe he'll find me something!


True dat!

One question (okay, 2 questions). . . whaddya do for a living? Is it a transportable skill and how are the markets in Boulder, Eugene, etc. for your job set?

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''The enemy isn't conservatism. The enemy isn't liberalism. The enemy is bulls**t.''

—Lars-Erik Nelson

My degree is in industrial engineering, but right now I'm doing semiconductor manufacturing and I can't stand it. I'm trying to get into a field that will actually be in North America in 10 years such as project management or systems analyst type jobs. As an IE, my skill set can be transported nearly anywhere, but it is somewhat of a niche skill set. I don't know how the markets are in Boulder/Denver and Portland/Eugene. Plan B is to go back to school to become a physical therapist but that timeline is always shifting. Right now, I'm kind of working on 3 tracks: 1) I'm trying to find a new job in Austin, 2) I'm still working on school and volunteer experience to get into PT school, and 3) looking at getting another job outside of Austin in another cool city to live in.

And I would love to have a basement!

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so, those of you who live in boulder - lets get the inside scoop. just HOW bad are the winters? I grew up in boston so that is my comparison.

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"What am I on? I'm on my bike busting my ass for six hours a day. What are YOU on?" - Lance Armstrong

 
I have never lived on the east coast so I can't compare our winters to a Boston winter but I can say that I thought our winter last year (only been here one year) was MUCH easier than winter in Kansas. The season here started earlier and lasted longer and definitely had more snow than we got out there but all in all it felt much much warmer. We had lots of sunny winter days and I remember MANY times going for runs in shorts in the winter. We did seem to get snow pretty regularly, at least compared to KS, but it melted off quickly. I thought winter here was actually pretty mild.

 
Eric: I LOVE college towns for their weirdness and both Boulder and Austin are probably about as weird as it gets! You see some wacky wacky stuff out there - excellent people watching for sure!!

FWIW, I grew up in Tampa and thought I loved the heat and would never leave Florida. Looking back, there is no way in hell that I would ever go BACK to Florida!!! I need a change of seasons, some cool weather, and a good excuse to bundle up in some fleece!!

I'm not a Boulder-ite, and haven't dealt real with winters since I lived in Chicago in the mid-90's. However, my understanding of the Denver area is that the winters can be cold (for a southerner), but that it's nothing compared to the winters in the northern midwest and the northeast. I've been told that because the Denver area has little rain and lots of sunshine (even in winter), that the snow doesn't accumulate like it does in the other cold parts of the country. Also, my understanding is that you don't typically see the super low below-freezing temps and wind chills as much as you do in places like Chicago, for instance.

But, then, I'm going based on hearsay, so I'm willing to be corrected by people who actually live there.

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''The enemy isn't conservatism. The enemy isn't liberalism. The enemy is bulls**t.''

—Lars-Erik Nelson

Oh, and one more thing. I also already own the unofficial state car of Colorado: the Subaru Outback. I bought that car 2 years ago thinking that I wasn't going to be in Austin forever so I was thinking ahead in that respect.

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We saw a bumper sticker the other day that said "Boulder: A dog in every Subaru!"

Do you have a dog? If not, you might want to get on that ...

I have a dog that purrs. And he has a mohawk aka "meow hawk" or "kitty hawk". I guarantee you that I would be the only person in Boulder with a cat with a mohawk. Seriously, he acts like a dog. He comes when I call him, he drinks from the toilet, he humps my leg, and I've taught him tricks.

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