Yesterday I run a mile. But in the craziest-fun context! You might have heard of the JP Morgan Chase Corporate Challenge, and the concept is similar, though it’s a different race situation. For starters, you only run one mile and you participate with a team of 10. Basically, it’s a 10 mile race with 10 legs.

And it is all set up in South Street Seaport, which I think is so much fun for events (the same area where you finish the NYC Half). Race started at 7 pm, and by 6 pm the place was bopping with a DJ, an Equinox warm up, and lots of fun booths to get tattoos and picture booths…

Soon we assign legs and we go to the start. They had these corrals for teams. Each team had a number (we were 31) so we went into the 30 to 40 corral. I was the first leg so I had the baton. Apparently, I should have been at the start line and I wasn’t. Thank Brittany for pushing me over there. I was all the way in the back, of about 50 people. A few announcements, a loud countdown and we are off.

Now, at this point in my life, I know how to run a mile. It took me a few years but I got it now. Those first two seconds of the race I was remembering the first time I had run the 5th avenue Mile: I was winning for one block and suffering for the rest of the race.

And now, everyone was taking off like it was a 100 meter race. Oh well. So, 1 second into the race, of course, someone tripped and fell.

And someone who was trying to avoid to fall, on my right, went right into me, with his baton. I got a little blood. I felt it but, you know, the mile hurts more so I forgot it all in two seconds.

The course has about 24 turns, and 5 of them are hairpin turns, which omg my quads (still super sore from having done IronStrength the day before) so I tried to keep the speed up to 70% for the first half.

Once on the way back, the crowd had thinned up a lot and I had passed about 12 people (I had nothing else to do but count people that went out too fast). You KNOW how much the mile hurts, I need a distraction.

 I pushed to 95%, got back to start/corral and handed the baton over!

Done!!! I was actually ready to do it again, but two team-mates had volunteered to take over the 2 legs. Phew.  That was exhilarating and fun. People said how the cobblestones were tricky, I didn’t even notice I was running on cobblestones. Either I was the only one wearing the right shoes (Sauconys Type A racing flats) or my quads were more of a problem than anything else.

As I wasn’t needed at the start/corral, I walked a bit over to cheer. Course is VERY cheering-friendly. Because of the turns you could see someone at least 3 times. There goes Juan!

It’s great that you can pick up some speeds on those straightaways! I moved over a bit and got to see him again.

There’s those hairpin turns I was telling you about. No worries, I yelled enough to compensate.

And guess who was right behind him??

Comment below if you know WHO this is!

So, we watched the rest of the team go and cheered for everyone until it got a bit dark. I have to say, the first leg is the messiest to run as it’s quite crowded for the first 400 meters as everyone fights for position. After that, it’s a constant stream of runners but never crowded and you’ll always have someone to chase. If you like adrenaline, the first leg is for you!

I REALLY LOVED THEIR SIGNS AND BANNERS. Wish I had taken pictures with all of them:

As Gaby’s sign says, show me the party.

Every bib had 5 tickets you could rip off, one dinner, one dessert and 3 drinks. Yes, alcoholic drinks!! There was a REAL party. A DJ, catered food and a great atmosphere. We had the dinner and the dessert. Oh, almost forgot, the bibs were STICKY!!!!! Have you used those before? No need to mess with stooopid safety pins and ruin your clothes; those bibs were the coolest.

We finished 30-31 (we were also team 31!!) tied up with Bank of America with a time of 1:13:28 (out of 48 teams). So you get and idea, Wells Fargo won with a time of 1:00:41. I think it’s a GREAT thing to do with your coworkers, whatever finish time you end up with, have your CEO pay for the entry and have the rest of the office come to cheer, everyone on matching shirts or even outfits! Why not? What else can you really do with your coworkers that is not drinking or eating? Anyone can run (or walk!!) a mile and participate, and if you don’t have 10 people, someone can run twice. You can hang out for a while before and after. I think it’s a great office outing. I actually think this is better than the JP Morgan Challenge, because this race is shorter, so more people can participate and it’s not such a massive event that you don’t even see your coworkers. Here, they are all in the corral!  The rest can go cheer. What do you think? Would you want to do it?