With a trailhead located less than a mile from the Pearl Street Mall, Sanitas attracts more than 300,000 visitors annually, according to Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks. The main Mount Sanitas trail extends 1.3 miles from the trailhead to the summit with a rocky ascent of 1,323 feet, offering panoramic views of the Boulder Valley.

High visitor traffic on trails susceptible to erosion require significant, long-term maintenance, open space officials say. Work will be supported by a $1.1-million grant from the Land and Water Conservation Fund and community fundraising from the Boulder Open Space Conservancy, a non-profit supporters group.

“We’re very fortunate to work with the Boulder Open Space Conservancy, which is helping us leverage philanthropic dollars,” said Phil Yates, spokesman for Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks. “Mount Sanitas is one of our more remarkable, popular and iconic locations within the city of Boulder’s open space system. One reason it’s so unique and so popular is its easy accessibility from the city. It provides a unique mountain foothills experience right in the heart of Boulder.”

Improvements will begin with repairs on the main Mount Sanitas trail, maintenance work at the summit, improving the East Ridge trail, which provides an alternative route to the summit and working on undesignated trails created by visitors hiking off-trail. Future plans include building new trails and installing infrastructure around eight bouldering areas.

No closures are anticipated during construction, but officials say intermittent delays may occur.

“When we construct ongoing trail maintenance and construction, the desire is to keep trails open to the greatest extent possible,” Yates said.

Sanitas is a challenging hike and is rated hard on the Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks website.

“The Mount Sanitas Trail has high foot traffic and meanders both sides of the ridge leading to the Mount Sanitas summit,” according to the website. “The terrain varies from open meadows to rugged boulders and projected rock outcrops. This hike has great rock formations, views above Boulder and optional bouldering areas.”

According to a description in “60 Hikes Within 60 Miles: Denver and Boulder,”  a guidebook by Kim Lipker and Mindy Sink, the mountain was once home to rock quarries named after a sanitarium dating back to 1895.

“The sanitarium eventually became Boulder Memorial Hospital Mapleton Center for Rehabilitation,” according to the guidebook. “During the 1920s, the University of Colorado owned and operated the quarries. Many of the older buildings on campus were built from the sandstone pulled from the Sanitas Quarries. The city of Boulder purchased the quarry and surrounding land in 1969, creating a nature and wildlife preserve.”

Since then, it has become a treasured landmark for Boulder hikers and runners.

“I have memories of people having very special moments on that perch at the top where you can take in remarkable views,” Yates said.

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Near the top of the Arthur’s Rock trail in Lory State Park, it’s easy for hikers to forget the elevation is only 6,800 feet. A steep notch in an outcrop of granite features a narrow rocky staircase that requires sure-footed balance and scrambling skills to ascend, making it feel more like a fourteener summit than a foothills hike only 20 minutes west of downtown Fort Collins.

Capping off a 1.7-mile hike that climbs 1,100 feet, the ramp to Arthur’s Rock is exhilarating. So is the panoramic view it reveals at the top.

Arthur’s Rock overlooks Horsetooth Reservoir, 1,350 feet below, while also providing sweeping views of Fort Collins and the plains to the east. Climbing through a dense forest in a steep-sided ravine, the trail is Lory’s most popular, and it’s one of the reasons Lory State Park is a place I love to hike.

I think of Lory as a hidden gem. It’s relatively undeveloped, delivering a far different experience from the teeming crowds of motor boaters and jet skiers at Boyd Lake State Park not far to the south in Loveland. It has no paved roads. It has five picnic areas but no campgrounds, although it does have a half dozen primitive backcountry campsites that require substantial hikes with significant climbs to reach.

“We describe our backcountry sites as primitive, and that’s how I would describe the character of the park relative to Boyd Lake,” said Lory State Park ranger Ian O’Brien. “They’ve got boat ramps, a million campsites. We just have those six backcountry campsites. We’d definitely like to leave this park in a more primitive condition so it has multiple opportunities for solitude. You can feel like you’re really out in nature, but you’re only a 20-minute drive from Old Town Fort Collins.”

It measures only four square miles, but it borders Horsetooth Reservoir, a park managed by Larimer County. Kayakers and paddleboarders can access the narrow 6.5-mile-long reservoir from five coves in Lory that are located on the reservoir’s western shore. One of these days, I’m going to bring my kayak to cool down on the reservoir after a long hike.

Lory has 28 miles of trails, several with substantial climbs similar to Arthur’s Rock in ravines that have been remarkably green and lush this spring. One trail on the western side of the park offers views of high mountains to the west, including Long’s Peak 30 miles to the southwest. That one requires a hike of not quite four miles one way with a 1,500-foot elevation gain, and it’s well worth the effort.

Lory also has relatively flat terrain in the valley along the reservoir that offers opportunities for mountain biking, trail running and horseback riding. And, bordering Lory to the south is the Horsetooth Mountain Open Space, managed by Larimer County, with trails that connect with some of Lory’s trails. Hikers can hike Horsetooth Rock from Lory, for example, although it’s a much shorter hike when accessed from the Larimer open space trailhead to the south.

“When you loop everything together,” O’Brien said of Lory’s connections with Horsetooth Mountain Open Space, “we’ve got almost a 60-mile trail network.”

Lory’s small visitor center has a surprisingly wide assortment of informational pamphlets. They include a brief history of the park, a list of wildlife that could be present (including black bear, mountain lions, bobcats, badgers, skunks, elk, deer, sheep, bats, rabbits, rodents and rattlesnakes) and checklists for birds and butterflies.

It has a pamphlet with details on the Arthur’s Rock trail, another outlining a 1.5-mile self-guided nature trail that passes through valley and montane ecosystems, and brochures with information on backcountry camping and rock climbing in the park.

Lory is celebrating its 50th anniversary as a state park. The taxidermy mounts in the visitor center — which include a bear, a mountain lion, a red fox, a porcupine, a great horned owl and a rattlesnake — all are wearing party hats. An anniversary celebration is planned for Aug. 2  with food trucks, a photo contest, guided hikes, booths and exhibits.

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And this time, the CSU senior did it at Hayward Field to become the Rams’ first outdoor national champ in 20 years.

Lesnar, the NCAA indoor shot put national champion in 2024, won the same event at the NCAA outdoor track and field championships on Thursday in Eugene, Ore., with a throw of 19.01 meters.

She came into this week’s meet as the top seed in the shot put and didn’t disappoint.

The daughter of WWE star Brock Lesnar hit the winning mark on her very first throw and was the only competitor to top 19 meters in the event. The victory came a year after she placed fifth in the event at the outdoor meet and continued the Rams’ tradition of strong throwers.

The last Rams outdoor national champion, Loree Smith, won the hammer throw in 2005. And Lesnar was joined by two other throwers at this week’s meet: Kajsa Borrman was 21st in the hammer earlier Thursday and Klaire Kovatch will throw in the discus on Saturday.

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It’s a good thing he did. Siegel, the founder — and until recently, the only employee — of a startup called Raide that makes gear and apparel for skiers and runners, won the top prize Thursday in a competition for outdoor industry companies held in conjunction with the Outside Festival, which unfolds this weekend in Civic Center Park. Siegel was one of five finalists out of 200 submissions who gave five-minute presentations before a panel of five judges at the Denver Public Library.

Because of a four-hour flight delay, Siegel landed in Denver at 2 a.m. Thursday. The competition, called Outside Ignite and organized by the Boulder outdoors media company Outside Interactive Inc., began at 10 a.m. In addition to the judges, the room was full of potential investors.

“It was the largest group that I’ve ever pitched, so I was nervous,” said Siegel, 33. “But once I got on stage, I was fine. I just needed to rip the band-aid off and get it done.”

Outside Inc., which is based in Boulder, created the Outside Festival last year to promote Colorado’s outdoors industry. It attracted 18,000 people to Civic Center Park, and organizers say they expect 25,000 this weekend. The company added the Ignite competition this year to support start-up companies.

“I love the idea of a pitch competition being associated with the Outside Festival, especially being hosted in Denver,” said Ariana Ferwerda of Denver, an Ignite judge. “There is such a blossoming outdoor and start-up scene here. Giving those founders the ability to get in front of a lot of people, share their ideas and ultimately seek investment is such a cool opportunity for them.”

Ferwerda knows the pressures of starting a company. She founded Halfdays, a women’s outdoor apparel brand.

“It was really difficult, especially in the early days, to get in front of investors,” Ferwerda said during a break in Ignite presentations. “I’ve been in their shoes and I understand how hard that is.”

Siegel founded Raide, which means steep in French, in October of 2023. It makes packs, accessories and apparel for skiing and trail running. Siegel previously worked for The North Face and SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocket-making company. He was a mechanical engineer there from 2013-15.

“SpaceX was amazing, one of the best work experiences ever,” Siegel said. “I was working on making sure nothing in the rocket broke from vibrations. A super-high paced, high-pressure environment.”

He moved to Carbondale two years ago and began his entrepreneurial pursuit. Winning the Ignite competition was worth $100,000 in cash, media, and legal services.

“I think the concept is really exciting,” Siegel said. “I think there needs to be more room for outdoor companies to get the word out for the industry to support them. That’s what puts innovation in the market. It’s cool to combine that with a competition and awesome networking opportunities.”

The Colorado Outdoor Recreation Industry Office, which is a division of the state’s Office of Economic Development and International Trade, partners with Outside Inc. and Visit Denver to put on the Outside Festival. It’s designed to celebrate and promote the state’s $17-billion outdoor recreation industry.

Outside Inc. chief executive Robin Thurston, a former competitive cyclist, compares the pressures of entrepreneurship to “chewing glass and getting punched in the stomach all day.” His entrepreneurial career began in 2009 with a digital mobile fitness tracking startup that offered maps via iPhone apps. Today, Outside Inc. reaches 80 million users through 25 media, digital, and technology platforms.

“To celebrate these entrepreneurs is such a big deal,” Thurston said. “As an entrepreneur, it’s really hard to get venues to be in front of investors, to be in front of potential consumers and get that visibility, as well as perfecting your pitch – how you think about your business and what you want to do with it. This is year one (of Ignite), but I feel like there is the opportunity for this to get bigger and better, and really grow how to discover the next generation of businesses that are going to have a big impact on the outdoor industry.”

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Hillary Allen, nicknamed “Hillygoat” for her ability to zoom across steep, technical mountain terrain in an ultrarunning sport known as skyrunning, was ranked No. 1 in the Skyrunner World Series in 2017. She was on track to become the first American woman to win the circuit — until she stepped on a loose rock going around a sharp turn in Tromsø, Norway, and tumbled 150 feet off a ridge line.

The Fort Collins native and Boulder resident broke 14 bones in the fall, including both wrists, both feet, five ribs and two vertebrae. The months that followed proved that the only thing that could match Allen’s endurance was her resilience.

“I saw it as an opportunity to discover how strong I really am, because up until that point, I don’t think I had the opportunity to really experience that,” Allen recalled. “It made me completely rebuild from ground zero.

“I remember thinking in the hospital bed that my life was over. … I had relied on (ultrarunning) to be my identity, then in an instant, it was all stripped and taken away from me. I was faced with a choice of either giving up or I could make the decision that I could run again, no matter if medical experts were telling me that I couldn’t.”

Allen chose the latter, and in the process, underscored her legacy as one of America’s greatest skyrunners.

Now 36, Allen burst onto the ultrarunning scene in her mid-20s, despite being only a recreational runner before that. After earning her undergraduate degree from Coe College, where she played tennis, the Fort Collins High School alum joined a running group that met early in the morning each Tuesday at George Washington High School.

Allen, then working on her master’s degree in neuroscience, physiology and structural biology from CU Denver, lived nearby. What she found in the runner’s group was a mentor in J’ne Day Lucore, as well as other women who schooled Allen in the art of endurance.

“Yeah, we were (kicking her butt),” recalled Day Lucore, a former professional runner and Colorado Running Hall of Famer. “She couldn’t keep up on the intervals. But it was clear from early on that she had the talent, the curiosity and the work ethic to be a good endurance runner. I just don’t think she knew how good she could be, and how far she could go.”

Turns out, Allen could go pretty far.

She won the US Skyrunner Series in 2014 as a rookie. After quitting her PhD program to pursue the sport full-time, she landed her first contract with The North Face a year later.

She placed third in the Skyrunner World Series that year to become the first American woman to make the podium on the circuit. That same season, she won the Speedgoat race in Utah and the Quest for the Crest race in North Carolina, both efforts resulting in course records. Based on her success, she also received an invitation to compete for Team USA at Festival des Templiers in France.

The ascension continued in 2016, when Allen finished second in the Skyrunner World Series. And she kept impressing in ’17. She won the Madeira Sky Race in Portugal with a course record and took third at Transvulcania in Spain until the fall at Tromsø changed the course of her career.

In the months after, one of Allen’s primary surgeons told her that she would be lucky if she could run recreationally again. For a woman accustomed to ultrarunning in skyraces that took her up and down elevation gains sometimes surpassing 20,000 feet, “‘jogging’ is like a four-letter word.”

“When I heard the doctor say ‘jogging,’ I had flashbacks to women with fake boobs and pink tank tops holding little pink one-pound weights and I was like, ‘That is not going to be me,'” Allen said with a laugh. “When (the doctor) told me that, I had two broken wrists at the time, and my instinct was I wanted to punch her in the face. But I couldn’t obviously. So I was just really sad instead.

“And in the end, I was actually really glad she did tell me all that, because it sobered me into the seriousness of the situation. That running wasn’t guaranteed, and in order to make it happen again, I needed to be fully committed and so serious about my recovery and so intentional, purposeful and tenacious in my physical therapy.”

Allen couldn’t get out of her hospital bed for nearly a week. In the initial stage of her recovery, her longtime physical therapist Matthew Smith recalled “deep, dark moments throughout that process that were pretty visible.”

“She started to question why the accident happened in the first place, and look back more than forward,” Smith said. “… In about half our sessions early on, there’d be tears, there’d be bargaining. She was going through the whole steps of loss.

“I remember her lying on her belly, with her leg off the side of the table, lifting her leg so it was equal to the rest of her body and she would get the shakes, she would start to sweat. It was really basic, phase-one post-operative work, and she would be full-on exhausted from the effort it took to produce a couple reps of one simple action.”

But Allen stacked small victories like those on top of each other — all the way to winning her first European event just 11 months after her fall.

Allen set a course record in the victory and sent a postcard to her doubtful doctor afterward. It served as further proof that the best way to motivate “Hillygoat” is to dare her she can’t.

“We were ecstatic at that point,” recalled Adam St. Pierre, Allen’s coach from 2017 to 2022. “Recovery had gone about as well as recovery can go. We were looking ahead, starting to make big plans, then some more setbacks happened. … There were more surgeries, more adversity. She was feeling a lot of self-doubt, wondering if her body was broken and if it was meant for this.”

There was surgery in 2018 to remove broken screws in her foot, put there as part of her initial recovery. She broke her right ankle in ’19 after slipping on ice. In ’21, she broke her left foot in an injury related to the fall, and she required another ankle surgery in ’23 that kept her off the trail for nearly a year.

During that period, Allen picked up gravel cycling and mountain biking. She’s since competed five times in the Unbound Gravel 200-mile, one of the top gravel bike races in the world, finishing as high as 17th. In three of those races, she competed while injured. She also wrote a book about her journey — “Out and Back: A Runner’s Story of Survival Against All Odds” — published in 2021.

“She’s just continued to show up for herself,” Smith said. “In her sport, that’s hard to do. It seems like there’s a lot of people who come and go, and there’s a lot of stars for a couple weeks and then people fade. But she just won’t (expletive) quit.”

It’s all a reflection of Allen’s mantra: “Your best days are ahead of you.”

“Competing at the elite level is a finite period of time, but sport is for forever,” Allen said. “It’s a lifestyle. I believe you can constantly continue to PR no matter how old you are — it’s just a relative PR.”

Going forward, Allen believes she still has more in the tank while also continuing to diversify her interests.

She started a coaching business. She’s gone back to school to get another master’s degree, this time in applied sports psychology. She’s become a speaker and delivered the keynote address at this year’s Sportswomen of Colorado gala. And she’s getting more invested in intertwining her career with the community, including hosting her first running camp in September.

In March, the Brooks-sponsored runner took third at the Run Through Time trail marathon in Salida, a race won by renowned ultrarunner and Colorado resident Courtney Dauwalter. Earlier this month, Allen won the Tiger Claw 50K in Washington state.

And upcoming this summer, she has a full slate of races ahead of her, including the Broken Arrow Skyrace in California, the Restonica Trail 100K in France and the Squamish 50/50 in Canada, with some bike races to follow in the fall.

In each of those skyraces, a healthy Allen will be grateful to toe the starting line. But she’s also still got the engine to win.

“In ultrarunning, and especially with women, we’re seeing women perform better and better as they age,” observed Karley Rempel, a runner who trains with Allen in Boulder. “It used to be if you weren’t in your 20s, the thought was you couldn’t be a pro runner. But women like Hillary are extending the boundaries of the age you can be elite at. And Hillary has the relentless positivity and love of the sport to keep pushing the envelope of what she can achieve.”

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Last month, Mantz was the top American finisher at the Boston Marathon, placing fourth overall. Moreover, his time of 2 hours, 5 minutes, 8 seconds was the second-fastest time by an American male in the prestigious history of the Boston Marathon.

As he has the past two years, Mantz will try to push the pace in a shorter distance, as the two-time defending champion of the men’s pro race returns to Colorado for the 45th Bolder Boulder on Monday, seeking a third consecutive victory.

“That would be a huge one. Bolder Boulder is so iconic,” Mantz said of a possible three-peat. “You look down that list, the people who have won it are all very accomplished. It’s fun to look down the list and see who’s won it. Historically, it’s a great race. A three-peat there, I would love to do, but that’s going to be a very hard thing to accomplish based on where my training’s at.”

Mantz is one of five runners to collect back-to-back wins the men’s pro race at the Bolder Boulder 10K, a club that also includes Arturo Barrios (1986-87), Thomas Osano (1991-92), Ridouane Harroufi (2007-08) and Allan Kiprono (2012-13). Although Barrios ultimately won four titles in eight years, no other men’s runner has collected three Bolder Boulder pro championships, let alone three in a row. Two women — Rosa Mota and Deena Drossin — have won three consecutive Bolder Boulder pro races. Ethiopia’s Mamitu Daska owns the race record with six titles, but she never won three consecutively.

Mantz will face plenty of competition in his attempt at history. Including from two runners with whom he has shared thrilling finishes over the past year.

While the rosters for the four American teams (two men, two women) were finalized two weeks ago, on Friday the Bolder Boulder announced the remainder of the pro field. Highlighting that list is Eritrea’s Yemane Haileselassie, who entered Folsom Field neck-and-neck with Mantz at last year’s Bolder Boulder before the American surged ahead to the finish line.

Also in the field is Ethiopia’s Addisu Gobena, who put together a photo finish with Mantz at the Houston Half Marathon in January. Both runners were clocked officially at 59:17, but Godena crossed the finish line just fractions ahead of Mantz, who still took home the U.S. men’s half-marathon record.

“It’s one of the more fun races as a pro,” Mantz said. “There’s two reasons you race. One is because you find that race very fun. And two, you’re going to make money from it, to be honest. Bolder Boulder has great prize money, but the big reason is it’s a fun experience. It’s a fun race. I loved cross country in high school, and it’s probably one of the most cross country-esque road races you run because there’s so many turns in that course. It’s hilly, but what I think makes the Bolder Boulder course so difficult is there’s a million turns. A lot for a 10K.

“It’s enjoyable. It’s a fun race. And running into that stadium, there’s nothing like it. The Olympics, you get a little bit of it at Boston, you get a little bit at the New York City Marathon. But running into (Folsom Field), that’s pretty cool every year.”

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Since President Donald Trump returned to office in January and unfurled a flurry of executive orders and directives, Colorado has joined with blue-state allies to file 20 lawsuits challenging those and other actions — a rate of more than one suit per week. It’s a litigious streak outpaced only by Trump’s blistering spree of executive orders and the Republican’s unprecedented attempts to pull the nation’s purse strings to his chest.

Colorado’s top elected lawyer, two-term Democratic Attorney General Phil Weiser, is no stranger to litigation against Trump: Weiser’s office sued the president and his administration at least 11 times during both men’s first terms. Just four months into Trump’s second term, Weiser has already surpassed that total, and he argues that the “level of lawlessness” is unprecedented.

“We’ve had to essentially stretch ourselves as a department to keep doing what I’ll call our normal work, as the people’s lawyer,” he said in an interview last week. Then there’s what he calls the “abnormal” task of the Trump era — “an unprecedented situation of being a constant evaluator of, ‘Is this action harming Colorado and is this action illegal?’ ”

“So we ask those two questions again and again and again,” Weiser said. “And 20 times, I’ve had to say: ‘Yes, it is.’ ”

So fast and furious have the executive orders come — with lawsuits often following quickly — that when The Denver Post asked Weiser’s office about the total number of cases, Weiser’s spokesman Lawrence Pacheco hedged his accounting.

A 21st suit might come before the end of the week, he warned Tuesday. (As of Friday afternoon, it hadn’t yet been filed.) The 19th and 20th cases had each been filed on Tuesday, both of them challenging attempts to withhold federal funding unless states cooperated with immigration enforcement.

The risk to the state is real: Hundreds of millions of dollars in various types of funding bound for Colorado — for vehicle charging stations, public health grants, academic research and public-safety programs — have been frozen or threatened in recent months. The health grants alone amount to $230 million, Weiser and other state officials have said.

Other challenged presidential orders have sought to implement Trump’s agenda for elections and immigration, attempted to dismantle of the U.S. Department of Education and put limitations on gender-affirming care.

Colorado Republicans, meanwhile, have argued that the state’s aggressive approach to federal action puts more federal funding at risk. They have said that as the elected president, Trump has the right to steer the nation toward his policy objectives.

During the state legislative session that ended May 7, House Republicans repeatedly accused their Democratic colleagues of “poking the bear” by passing policies opposed by Trump and by establishing a $4 million fund to defend against federal action.

Minority Leader Rose Pugliese, the House’s top Republican, said Friday that she wanted to be less litigious and “to be careful continuing to put a target on Colorado’s back.”

“Maybe we can have more conversations (with the Trump administration), as opposed to litigation,” Pugliese said, “And that’s my concern, is that (the lawsuits) feel like more politically motivated.”

State AGs also targeted Obama, Biden

The partisan, multistate litigation filed in response to Trump’s orders is part of a growing trend that has oscillated depending on which party is in power, legal experts said.

Republicans first launched the practice under President Barack Obama. Then Trump’s first administration was sued 160 times, almost entirely by Democratic attorneys general, according to the independent tracker AttorneysGeneral.org. President Joe Biden was sued 122 times by multistate coalitions overwhelmingly dominated by Republicans.

“We’ve seen this huge shift for Democrat AGs in the states to fight against the Republican president, and vice versa,” said Doug Spencer, a constitutional law professor at the University of Colorado Law School.

There’s another political dimension, he said: Current Texas Gov. Greg Abbott filed “dozens and dozens” of lawsuits against Obama when Abbott was attorney general, helping spark the trend while raising his own profile. Weiser is now running for governor in Colorado’s 2026 election, when the seat will be open.

As congressional Democrats have struggled to combat Trump this year, attorneys general have represented a tangible — and effective — counter to the president for restless Democratic voters.

Still, Spencer argued that the rush of lawsuits against Trump had been driven more by Trump’s attempts to upend parts of the Constitution and the country.

“Trump himself has been issuing so many executive orders — if the goal is to keep pace and push back, substantively or politically, it’s hard to necessarily say (Democratic attorneys general) are turning up the dials,” he said. “I think they’re being reactive.”

Federal judges have blocked several Trump orders or administrative actions as a result of litigation in which Colorado’s involved.

A Massachusetts judge put a stop to the National Institutes of Health’s plan to cap research grants. A court in Maryland ordered the reinstatement of thousands of fired federal workers. And on Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments related to Trump’s order attempting to end birthright citizenship, which had been swiftly blocked in Massachusetts.

Other cases — like the two filed Tuesday or another one, challenging Trump’s tariffs — are still in their early stages.

Weiser’s office is taking the lead role on three of the 20 cases. Those are related to electric vehicle infrastructure funding, the termination of public health grants and the dismantling of AmeriCorps.

For the rest, the state has played a more supportive role.

Leader states take on the bulk of a case’s work, Weiser said, and the coalition’s members have discussed which office has the capacity and expertise for individual issues to determine who will take which role.

States’ rights ‘are going to be so important’

Preparation among the blue-state attorneys general began after the November election. Before Trump assumed office, Weiser’s office asked Colorado lawmakers for more money and employees.

Given the state’s budget shortfall, legislative staff initially recommended rejecting the request. An analyst wrote that Weiser’s office could just take a backseat to other states in the litigation, rather than lead.

But Democratic legislators eventually agreed to direct the funds to his office. Sen. Jeff Bridges, the chair of the Joint Budget Committee, said in March that while the request would result in rare growth in a year of cuts, it was “an investment … that will pay dividends in protecting a lot of the investments that we would lose from the federal government.”

Lawmakers also established the $4 million defense fund — which can be directed to Weiser’s office via Gov. Jared Polis — to combat federal action.

As for the AG’s stable of attorneys, “people are not getting paid more,” Weiser said Wednesday. “When you’re a lawyer in the Department of Law, you get a salary whether you’re working 40 or 45 hours a week, or 60 or 65 hours a week. We’ve had incredible willingness to step up and do that extra work.”

None of the Trump-challenging cases has been filed in a federal court based in Colorado. Eight have been filed in Massachusetts, and five more are in court in Rhode Island. The blue-state AGs — which also include those in Hawaii, Washington state, Illinois, New Jersey and California — discuss where to file the cases, Weiser said. That’s a mirror of the strategy in Republican-led suits that were often filed in Texas, where the district and appellate courts were favorable to conservative challenges.

“One of the realities we have to look at is, ‘Do we have judges — not just at the district court, but at the court of appeals — who are more hospitable or more hostile to the case?’ ” Weiser said.

The shift to attorneys general forming coalitions and suing the government has practical — along with partisan — benefits, Spencer said. Those offices typically have more resources and higher-caliber attorneys on staff. Courts often look at them with more deference and speed than private firms or groups that would otherwise file suit.

As a result, challenges of Trump’s orders have been met with swift hearings and injunctions, Spencer said.

Just look at Thursday’s U.S. Supreme Court hearing: Normally, it takes years before a lawsuit climbs the judicial ladder and reaches the high court. But the birthright citizenship case — and an underlying question about the power of district judges to block orders across the entire country — reached the justices in a matter of months.

The next question, said Spencer and Siddhartha Rathod, a Denver civil rights lawyer, is whether Trump and the federal government will accept any court decisions that go against them.

“We will face this constitutional crisis, and I think we may already have, to some degree,” Rathod said. “And that’s why state rights are going to be so important. That’s why having strong attorneys general, strong governors is a matter of such importance.”

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But when the Colfax Marathon and associated races kick off Sunday morning, 28 workers with the Colfax BRT project will be running in the marathon relay event, part of which shoots right through the construction zone. And that includes the big boss.

“We really care about Colfax, and we really care about community,” said project manager Jonathan Stewart, who will be running the 6-mile anchor leg on one of seven four-member marathon relay teams composed of BRT project workers. “We are your friends and neighbors. We care about this city as much, if not more than, everybody else. A lot of us live along the corridor.”

Construction that has Colfax restricted to one lane each way is happening from the Capitol at Lincoln Street past Colorado Boulevard, a distance of more than 2 miles. Of that, 1.5 miles of the marathon, half marathon and marathon relay course will pass through the construction zone from the Esplanade near East High School to Lincoln.

About 120 construction workers have been assigned to the project, which is being managed by the city in partnership with RTD and CDOT. They know the project has inconvenienced residents and businesses — and in some cases brought them near to closure.

“Businesses get frustrated with us, as if we are the ones who decided to build this,” Stewart said. “This was a citizens’ initiative. This project was voted (on). It’s not like the construction worker who is pouring concrete has the ability to halt the project. These people they’re getting frustrated with are their friends, their neighbors, their customers who live in this community.”

There’s also construction happening on West Colfax in Denver and in Lakewood that will impact the race there. And then there are the closures that the race itself will cause. Colfax will be closed to motorists during the race on Sunday, and there will be rolling closures on other streets between 5 a.m. and 1 p.m., including southbound Colorado Boulevard between 17th and 29th avenues. RTD bus and train routes also will experience detours. Get information at rtd-denver.com.

To race organizers, it wouldn’t be the Colfax Marathon without its namesake.

“Every single one of these construction entities has been terrific,” said Colfax Marathon chief executive Andrea Dowdy. “We’ve walked the course with all of them, and they’re wonderful. Our runners will be able to run right down the street like they always do — no change to our course.”

Construction workers will even have cheering sections.

“There are other construction groups across the city who have decided to become cheer groups,” Dowdy said, “placing themselves on Colfax in their construction areas to cheer on the runners.”

Training for Sunday has reignited Stewart’s love for running. He was a runner until a decade ago, when foot and leg injuries prompted a turn to cycling.

“I ended up hanging up the running shoes, but I’m finding myself really enjoying running again,” Stewart said. “I’ve really gotten back into it. It’s pretty cool.”

The marathon, half marathon and marathon relay start and finish in City Park. The Urban 10-miler finishes there but starts in Lakewood. The marathon and marathon relay will start at 6 a.m., and the half marathon will go off at 6:30 a.m. Rolling road closures will be in effect.

The half marathon and marathon relay are sold out, but the 10-miler and marathon are still open for registration, as is Saturday’s 5K. The full suite of races attracted 21,000 in 2023 but jumped to 25,000 last year. Dowdy said this year’s number is tracking to be about 25,000 again.

New this year is a $22,560 prize-money purse for Coloradans in the half marathon, called the Colorado Half Marathon Showdown, with the men’s and women’s winners to be awarded $5,280 each. Runners satisfy the eligibility criteria for prize money if they have been current Colorado residents for six months, if they are current USATF Colorado members, if they were raised in Colorado or are current Colorado collegiate athletes.

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For David Seligman, that focus would be a continuation of what he called his “life’s work.” A Harvard Law grad, Seligman since 2018 has led the Denver-based nonprofit Towards Justice, which has backed litigation and legislation to support ride-hailing app drivers, renters, migrant workers and meatpackers.

“I’ve seen throughout my career that there are two sets of law in this country,” he said in an interview. “There’s one for those with wealth and power, and one for the rest of us. Especially as the Trump administration is dismantling … the parts of the government that are there to protect workers, consumers, small businesses and the environment, it’s critical right now that we make sure those with wealth and power play by the same set of rules as the rest of us.”

Seligman enters an increasingly crowded 2026 Democratic primary field to succeed term-limited Attorney General Phil Weiser. Secretary of State Jena Griswold is an immediate front-runner, but other candidates include Boulder District Attorney Michael Dougherty and former state House Speaker Crisanta Duran.

He said he wants to build upon and expand the work of Weiser, who is running for governor. Weiser has filed or joined lawsuit after lawsuit against the Trump administration since January. Before that, his office had pursued consumer-protection investigations and lawsuits — some of which Seligman’s firm was involved in — against landlords and companies like Wyatt’s Towing.

Seligman said he would continue that work while focusing on medical debt, corporate price gouging and responding to the the federal government’s withdrawal from regulatory oversight.

Against the longstanding political figures in the AG’s race, Seligman — who’s never run for office — stands as a relative unknown among the broader voting public. His early challenge will be elevating his message and finding a constituency in a crowded political environment and in a Democratic Party still searching for a path forward.

Seligman’s charted path will likely be the most liberal of the AG field. He spoke at U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ Greeley rally earlier this year, and he joins the race with endorsements from most of the progressive lawmakers in the state Capitol. That includes the state House’s third-ranking Democrat, Rep. Jennifer Bacon, along with former state Democratic Party chairwoman Morgan Carroll.

“Right now, people know that the world feels deeply unfair and deeply scary,” Seligman said. “And I want to fight to be their lawyer to make sure the law is on their side — and not on the side of billionaires and corrupt politicians.”

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