Wednesday, May 4, 2011

ACLI Capital Challenge 2011 Race Report

This morning marked the second installment of the Mollie Races Into Shape plan. I did the Capital Challenge 3-Miler on Hains Point with my office team.


I checked the weather late last night: rain. 100% chance. Ick. (The picture below is from last year when the weather was nice.)

But I am nothing if not reliable, so I braved the spring showers and showed up at work at 7am to meet my co-workers/teammates. (Basically, I didn’t workout last night, so if I skipped the race I would have to guilt myself into doing a tempo run anyways…)
 
The conditions weren’t THAT bad, but I must admit, I wasn’t exactly bringing my super competitive race-face…My office team was incomplete, so we were in it more for the end-of-the-race-pastry than to show off NatGeo's extreme running prowess...

I warmed up 8 minutes easy, then lined up to start. The whistle blew and we were off, the wind at our backs for the first half of the race, and in our faces for the end. The course is an out-and-back, flat as a pancake (yumm pancakes…). 

I settled into a 6:30-pace stride for the first mile. My second mile was pretty slow: 6:50, but my last mile picked up a bit to be about 6:40. My average pace was 6:39, and I finished in 19:57. Official results aren’t out yet, but I think I was the 6th woman…

It was the race's 30th Anniversary...kind of sad that they got such rotten conditions. We left immediately after everyone finished, skipping the awards and speeches.

I jogged a 15 minute cool down, stuffed an apple and chocolate croissant into my race t-shirt (it was still raining) and by 9:30 was showered and at my desk. Just another Wednesday.