Chase Corporate Challenge - Race Report

Time again for the annual Chase Corporate Challenge 3.5 mile race at RIT. Was getting excited leading up to the event as there were murmurs of the world championships being held in London a few weeks before the 2010 Olympic opening ceremonies. As a bit of background, the Chase Corporate Challenge is an event put on by Chase Bank. There are events held all over the World. Companies enter teams, everyone runs, and after 4-person teams are submitted (male, female, and coed) by each company and the winning relays get to go to the world championships. The best part, Chase picks up the tab, including airfare, hotel, food, etc. Good times for sure.

Suffice it to say, while I am not a short distance runner, I took some time to prepare for this race in the hopes of being on a winning relay. Fast forward to race day and the weather was perfect, maybe a bit too perfect as it was a slight bit warm, but much better than past years that have been plagued with thunderstorms. After warming up I secured myself a spot on the line, and as the start drew near my ~10,000 competitors lined up behind me.

When the gun went off I surged to the front to ensure that I did not get tangled up in merging runners; the start at this race can be pretty intense. As the lead runners stretched out the pack I found myself sitting comfortably in 3rd and as we approached the 1 mile marker my Garmin read 4:56min; a rather fast start and I hoped I would be able to hold on. As we ran through mile 2 my pace started to break down slightly and I fell into 7th, but was still running strong. At the 5K mark I passed through at 16:48min. This alone was huge for me, first time under 17:00min for a 5K. Unfortunately I was not done yet, still another 0.4miles to run and man did those last few tenths of a mile hurt.

Ended up crossing the line in 11th with a time of 19:38min. Better yet I was the fourth male from the University of Rochester to cross, we had dominated the mens race! ... or so it seemed. The celebration was bitter sweet however, as a few days later we found out that one of the other UR men was disqualified due to some shenanigans with respect to working hours (you need to be a 40hr a week employee to represent the company team). Long story short, had a great race, but will not be going to worlds this year (or so it seems), official results are still not posted ... so there is still hope ... maybe ...