Corporate Running at the highest level
A lot of action the past couple of weeks with a long travel trip and some back to back racing that I am not sure what to make of.
On Saturday the 6th was the Chase Corporate Challenge Championships (if you scroll down the article you will see the picture of one handsome guy) in NYC on Park Ave. It is a great race and I always look forward to this one because it is a lot of fun racing in the city with all the skyscrapers looking straight down on you. It almost feels like indoor track. The temperature was about 75 degrees when we started which is pretty warm for 9:00 am on an October morning in NYC. Anyway, I needed to save some for the Army 10 the next day but I also wanted to have a good showing so I went out at what I thought was a conservative 5:05 pace, which actually ended up being 4:56 pace. Oops. I was in about 30th place which made me think either this race has gotten much better or everyone went out way too fast. I was right on both accounts. As I went down off the viaduct to the 2nd hairpin turn I passed two groups. After the hairpin corner heading back uptown I tried to maintain my original pace figuring others would not be able to hold the hot opening tempo. Turns out none of the Americans could hold the tempo but the Africans and British had no trouble with it at all. I drove the final half mile pretty quick in about 2:24 and managed to out kick one African and the German I was battling with the whole way. Ended up with a 17:25 for 3.5 miles, which is respectable at this point in my training with the unusual circumstances of the weekend.
4:56.71
4:58.53 9:55.24
5:02.66 14:57.90
2:26.94 17:24.84
Corporate running is not at all what it used to be. The winning time was 15:53 by a guy named Enos from Johannesburg. As a matter of fact, I think the top ten except two guys from England were from Johannesburg. I guess it is up to me to get faster which I don’t see happening so I will be shooting for top 15 again next year instead of trying to win the big one which has remained an elusive goal.
After the NYC race, we piled into the momish, yet functional mini-van, and headed down to our nations capital of Washington DC for the army 10 miler. We woke up at 5:30 for a 5:45 van meeting and headed pre-dawn to the pentagon. This is the most paranoid race in the world so you have to go through metal detectors and they go through your bags. There are snipers on the roof and a couple of swat vans nearby.
This race has a 8:00 am start time and the temperature was already at balmy 84 degrees. One of the nice things about the army 10 is all the land along the course is dead flat.
The unfortunate thing is it is wide open. On a hot day with no cloud cover, we were just cooking out there. It felt really hot just on the start line so I decided to scrap my 5:10 plan and try to go out in 5:12-20 and then pick it up. Well, my plans don’t always work so I ended up just bouncing around 5:15 pace until the last mile. The second 5:12 is slightly downhill and the 5:20 is slightly up hill so those balanced out and 5:15 was the pace. I was in a real competitive battle the last 3 miles with a guy from brazil and a guy from redstone arsenal. I was chasing them down but they were only going about 2 seconds per mile slower than I was so it was tough. Next year I will probably take a little more risk in going out with the faster groups because running alone the whole time just gets boring. Here is the data.
5.15
5.14
5.15
5.12
5.17
5.12
5.20
5.16
5.17
5.05
52.28
Monday 1
Training Run 11:30:00 AM - 10.00 mi @ 1:09:35 (6:57 pace)
Training Run 6:00:00 PM - 5.20 mi @ 35:45 (6:52 pace)
Tuesday 2
Training Run 11:30:00 AM - 5.00 mi @ 35:00 (7:00 pace)
Running Workout 6:00:00 PM - Fartlek - - 5.00 mi @ 24:00.00 (4:48 pace)
Wednesday 3
Training Run 11:30:00 AM - 7.20 mi @ 50:01 (6:56 pace)
Training Run 6:00:00 PM - 6.20 mi @ 44:06 (7:06 pace)
Thursday 4
Training Run 11:30:00 AM - 9.00 mi @ 59:10 (6:34 pace)
Friday 5
Training Run 7:30:00 AM - 6.30 mi @ 44:26 (7:03 pace)
Training Run 4:30:00 PM - 3.00 mi @ 21:00 (7:00 pace)
Saturday 6
Running Competition 12:00:00 AM - Chase Corporate Challenge Championships (Road Race) 3 Mile Road Race @ 14:57.90 (4:59 pace) Place: 12
Sunday 7
Running Competition 12:00:00 AM - Army 10 Miler (Road Race) 10 Mile Road Race @ 52:28.00 (5:14 pace) Place: 13
TOTALS Running: 88.9 mi
That’s all I got.
Comments
Congratulations to the best corporate runner in the U.S.! :-)
I'm glad to hear that things are still going well. You seem to like to race in pairs, because the last races I remember you doing were also back-to-back.
Posted by: Alison | October 18, 2007 3:23 PM
Thanks Alison.
My races really seemed to come in bunches this fall. Not planned, just the way the schedule worked out for me. I am now on a much more traditional once a weekend every other week schedule.
Take care of that knee!
Posted by: ryan | October 19, 2007 4:07 PM