I finally made it to the Mercedes Benz Corporate Run yesterday. Last year, I had signed up and even trained but was unable to make it to the event. This added a little extra uncertainty so by the time the race came I had tied myself in knots of nervousness.
According to the counts there were over 17,000 people present and taking part in the event. The streets were clogged with people chatting and waiting for the race to start.
Once the starting gun went off the mass of people began to move painfully slow. It took a full 10 minutes for my part of the mass to reach to the starting line at which time I started my stopwatch and began to maneuver through the crowd.
I started to try to jog, thinking everyone around me eventually would but it wasn't happening. The people around me kept walking and pleasantly chatting on their cellphones during the race. I could barely get two steps before running into someone.
I noticed people were jumping over the concrete barricades in hopes of getting around the masses of walkers. I told my race partner I was going to jump the barricades too and she followed. I was a little apprehensive being that I had never had an active childhood hence I had never jumped over anything in my life. I expected to topple over or worse yet immediately get arrested by the police (Yes, my mind works in mysterious ways) but neither happened. I was pleasantly surprised by my agility and was able to jump over a several barricades quite easily.
Nearing the bridge we were finally able to get into a gentle jog, our feet rattling the bridges metal side walks after jumping the barricades yet again before finally rejoining the mass of people.
The entire run consisted of this stop-start jog-run obstacle course around and over people and barricades.
I yielded a respectable 00:37:19
I know I can get a better time on a 5K but considering the added obstacle course I think I did reasonably ok but my goal will be to get a sub-30 5k in the near future.
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