Heath's Random Thoughts

Corporate Challenge Update

I am finally getting around to posting an update on what happened at the JP Morgan Chase Corporate Challenge. I would have done it sooner, but I spent the day on Friday packing for this last weekend's camping trip to Warren Dunes in Michigan, which I will be blogging about later.

Thursday evening was a gorgeous evening for the race with warm temperatures and a slight breeze. As you know I was a little pensive about how I would do. Once I met up with Kelly, we swung by her company's tent said hello to a few people and then stopped by my company's tent to grab a water and say hi. From there we made for the starting line where approximately 23,000 other racers were lined up. My company had about 700 people signed up for the race which was the largest corporate group next to JP Morgan Chase, who sponsors the race. After standing around in the herd of people for what seemed like forever and several speeches from sponsors the race finally started. Well, as you can imagine, with that many people, the race was slow going at first as Kelly and I dodged worked hard to dodge the walkers and runners who were running a slower pace as us. After the first mile Kelly had us timed at about a 11 minute mile. We kept going from there working our way through the hordes of runners and walkers. At mile 2 we were still on a 11 minute mile pace when I started to feel some tightening in my ankles which had been holding up surprisingly well to that point. Thanks to Kelly's encouragement I was able to fight through and ignore the pain until it I didn't really notice it anymore. Just before mile three Kelly's cold started to get the best of her a bit and this time it was my turn to encourage her a bit. I must have worked because she pushed through it and the last half mile it was all I could do to keep my pace up to keep up with her. We ended up finishing the race in 37 minutes, which is just under an 11 minute mile. This was 8 minutes better than I ran it in last year. This year I was able to run the whole thing without walking once, which was a big accomplishment for me. Shortly after the race I was feeling pretty good, which Kelly attributed to the fact that I am better cardiovascular shape than I thought, since my heart rate recovered pretty quickly.

From there we grabbed some water and our free t-shirts and walked over to my company's tent for a hot dog, some beer, and a couple of cookies. We traded "war" stories with some other runners and then headed over to her companies tent for a little while before she had to hop on her bus and head home.

All-in-all the race went pretty well I thought. The only real problem I had was some soreness in my ankles and my right Achilles tendon, which I am chalking up to caring around 10-15 extra pounds that I don't need. Now if I could lose that I would feel pretty darn good!

posted by Heath @ 11:59 AM