Prior to the start I secured my place at the front of the pack. When it comes to competition, especially athletic competitions I am always "in-it-to-win-it". I never take it easy an I am always ready to get after it. So it was no surprise that I was setting myself up to run with the fastest runners in the hopes of hanging on as long as I could.
The race started and I immediately surprised by the pace of the lead pack (which I was in); it was much "slower" than I anticipated. Having focused my run training on marathon distances I imagined that anything shorter would be a sprint from start to finish. I was comfortably sitting in the top 15 runners as we passed the first miles marker. They were shouting out splits and as I passed I recall hearing "4:50" and immediately thinking "DAMN". Like I said before I am NOT a runner nor do I pretend to be one. When I heard my split the first thing that went through my head was that offseason training definitely paid off.
As the race progressed the field spread out and the leaders pushed a strong pace. I was able to continue at a solid cadence and passed through the 5K mark at 17:45. Considering my fastest 5K time in high school was ~18:50, I was again very pleased. I finished in 23rd overall with a final time of 20:22.
The way the chase corporate challenge works is that there are races all over the world and individuals compete on "teams" (under the name of the company they work for). As a graduate student at the University of Rochester I was racing for the largest "team" at the race. The times of the top male and female finishers for each team are summed together and the fastest all-male, all-female, and co-ed 4 person teams are invited to compete in the Chase Corporate Challenge World Championship; this year it is held in Singapore. My team missed out by less than a minute, but rumor is that next year it will be in Sydney Australia.
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