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Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Training for Corporate Challenge

So a couple of months or so ago I signed up to run in the JP Morgan Corporate Challenge in which my company was a participant. I was all excited that this was going to be the motivation I needed to get me in summer shape. I buzzed about it with my co-workers and did some research on the best ways to train for a three mile race. Yeah, I know who needs to train for a three mile race? I do! I am not a runner and every pound on the pavement is going against the grain of my natural couch loving self. I found this site to be helpful but I didn’t follow the rules, go figure.

I decided I could make up my own training rules. I had taken a few months off from the gym so after a few depressing visits to the treadmill I realized I was a beginner again! My training was bumped into full force though; I had no choice with only four weeks until the big race. I decided I was going to write a little training schedule which looked a little like this:

  • Day 1-Run 1 mile, lift some weights
  • Day 2- Rest
  • Day 3-Run 2 miles
  • Day 4-Walk 60 minutes
  • Day 5-Run 3 miles
  • Day 6-Walk 60 minutes
  • Day 7-Rest


I got up until the 4th day and then I realized that I was not able to run in the challenge because I had inadvertently booked a trip to Las Vegas that very week. Oh the horror! As you can tell I was really distraught about this. Actually, all sarcasm aside, I was a bit disappointed because this was my first corporate challenge and the race seemed like it would be really fun. I like the people I work with and it would be enjoyable to do something extracurricular with my friends here. Now, I wasn’t too sad that I didn’t have to rush myself into ‘running’ shape but doing the first four days of my training actually inspired me to keep on exercising. After all, summer has no mercy.

Since I still want to be involved with the challenge I opted to remain on the planning committee. The planning committee is in charge of getting the post race gathering place organized. This was a fun little project. After work one day I went with a co-worker to scout out places for my company's  employees to independently grab a drink, a snack and discuss how speedy we all were. Unfortunately, this proved to be a bit trickier than I had expected.

Many companies had reserved space already and this should not have been too shocking since there are a lot of companies involved in the race. Yet, for some reason I was still a little surprised. I was truly proving to be a flake with this challenge, scheduling a vacation the day of the race and other companies beating me to post-race reservations?! In my defense, I am normally much more organized and on top of it in my day job. I guess this was a race I was just never meant to run and as for the post race relaxing? We eventually found a place that had room and I predict it will be one productive and amusing day!