The 2008 ACLI Capital Challenge

The Mission assigned to me by the Chairman's representative in 2006: Assemble a team of five for the ACLI Capital Challenge 3-Mile Race, in which teams from the Senate, Congress, Executive Branch, Judiciary and the Media race each other. Each team in our Executive Division had to be captained by a Commissioner, be comprised of agency staffers and contain a female. There were similar team requirements for all the Branches.

The Challenge: Find a Captain. The oldest Commissioner stepped forward. He trained hard and won third in his category of Captains over 59. I already knew a fast woman runner in my agency, A, and our rock star, G, agreed to run.

In 2006, we finished 7/28 in the Executive Division, 15/113 overall. Our individual finishes in the field of 642 were 43, 122, 162, 165 and 424. Our times were G 19:14 (6:25), M 21:22 (7:07), A 22:04 (7:21), me 22:09 (7:23), Commissioner 26:59 (9:00). (Right: The Commissioner accepts his age group medal in 2006.)

We were ebullient over our good showing. For me it was a PR by six seconds of 22:09 (7:23) at the 3-mile distance. But my PR in the longer 5K distance, 21:58 (7:05) set in 2001, was still lower and I really wanted to break 22 minutes in a 3-Miler race, which are few and far between.

In the 2007 race, I had to replace M and his 21:22. The Commissioner was injured but gamely ran anyway because no other Commissioner could or would run (no Captain, no team, no race).

G improved by a full minute in the first slot, and A stepped up into the number two slot and more than replaced M's time. We lost time in the three through five slots, however. I wilted in the heat and felt like I let the team down when I ran 21 seconds slower than the prior year, losing almost half a minute in the third spot. Newcomer C did an excellent job, running sub-8 minute miles, although we lost over a minute in the fourth slot. The Commissioner couldn't overcome his injury, which prevented him from training, and we lost a few minutes in the fifth slot. (Left: The 2007 team, A, G, the Commissioner, me and C.)

In 2007, we finished 14/33 in the Executive Division, 36/124 overall. Our individual finishes in the field of 670 were 29, 145, 217, 280 and 615. Our times were G 18:14 (6:05), A 21:09 (7:03), me 22:30 (7:30), C 23:34 (7:51), Commissioner 32:35 (10:52).

The team slipped by 6:14 last year. C'est la guerre.

In this year's race, I had to find a woman to replace A and her 21:09. The Commissioner was still injured but gamely ran anyway when another Commissioner who stepped forward to run became injured (no Captain, no team, no race).

G improved by seven seconds in the first slot, M came back in the number two slot and we improved there by over a minute and a half, while I took over a minute off the third slot's time. We lost time in the four and five slots, however. Newcomer K did an excellent job, running sub-9 minute miles, although we lost over two minutes in the fourth slot. The Commissioner couldn't overcome his injury, which prevented him from training, and we lost a few seconds in the fifth slot.

In 2008, we finished 12/29 in the Executive Division, 35/108 overall. Our individual finishes in the field of 606 were 21, 58, 145, 354 and 557. Our times were G 18:07 (6:02), M 19:25 (6:28), me 21:25 (7:08), K 25:40 (8:33), Commissioner 32:40 (10:53).

The team improved by 45 seconds this year. We all felt triumphant. Team races, where everyone pulls hard for everyone else, are a blast. This race in Anacostia Park, SE, is a scenic, flat out-and-back along the Anacostia River. It runs under three bridges.

Personally, my splits for the 3 miles were 6:49, 7:19 and 7:15, for a PR by 44 seconds of 21:25 (7:08). I went out fast and held on, even finding a tiny bit of reserve at the end. I nailed the distance. It was just one of those races.

Take a day off!

One day. What a difference one day makes.

My left ankle has been tender for awhile now. I woke up on Monday with it sore from my weekend training, which was a diminished workload anyway.

On Saturday I ran seven miles with my 10K Group Training Program at a ten-minutes-per-mile pace. That program’s 10K race is only three weeks away and since I was one of only two coaches who showed up, I took half the runners out.

On Sunday I practiced running at an 8:30-minutes-per-mile pace, the target pace I set for the upcoming marathon which I recently signed up for. I averaged 8:09 for the first five miles, not very close to an 8:30 pace you might say, but for those of us who still don’t have a Garmin, we have to just run by feel on the trail from one milepost to another, and see where we’re at on the watch when we arrive. I then ran the sixth mile in 7:38 to practice bearing down at the end.

Monday my ankle was suffering so I "just" ran a mile, at what I hoped was an easy 8-minute pace (7:51). Tuesday morning I lay in bed wiggling my ankle and I decided to take a day off from running, a decision I second-guessed all day long. I had put together a team for my agency for a 3-mile race coming up the next morning (today), the ACLI Capital Challenge, and my ankle was not feeling good all day long yesterday.

This morning though, my ankle felt much better after a full day of rest. Imagine that! (Right: A, M and G at the 2006 ACLI Capital Challenge 3-Mile Race in Anacostia Park in SE. The race t-shirts were yellow that year. After running a 21:22, M didn't run the next year.)

I slipped on my heavy ankle brace and went off to the 8 am race, feeling that perhaps I wouldn’t let the team down this year. It was a beautiful morning to run, cool, breezy and sunny, with no humidity. (Left: My agency's 2007 team. The race t-shirts were green last year. After running a 21:09, A departed the agency.)

I was third on my team of five, finishing over three minutes behind my agency’s rock star, G, and two minutes behind M, who always beats me but who has been absolutely killing me lately at the monthly noontime Tidal Basin 3K race. However, I achieved my personal gold standard because I hit every one of my pre-race goals. I PR’ed, broke 22 minutes for the distance, got my 3-mile PR faster than my 5K PR and beat my doppelganger Peter, who had beaten me the prior two years. I’ll give you a race report after the official results go up.

ACLI Capital Challenge 2007

Two weeks ago I ran in the ACLI Capital Challenge, an invitational 3-mile race, where teams from the legislative (Senate and House teams), executive and judicial branches and the Fourth Estate (Print and Electronic media teams) compete. Each team has five members, one of them a woman, and has to be captained by a Senator, Representative, Chief, Judge or Bureau Head. All five members on a team are scored by the place they finish in the race, and those place numbers are added up. The team with the lowest total wins.

I said in a previous post that it was a low point of my running career. It was a depressing morning.

I have assembled the team for my agency for the last two years. Last year the agency head who was our captain won an award in his age category, Male Captain Over 60. Our team did well last year, coming in 15th out of 113 teams. I PRed at the 3 mile distance in 22:09. I was fourth on our team. A beat me by five seconds.

However, our captain was injured as a result of training for that race and this year he asked me to find someone else if I could. No other head of the agency was available, so he stepped up to the plate again. His injury was still bothering him and he could only train on a bicycle.

C replaced one runner who ran a 21:22 last year who couldn’t participate again. I thought I was ready for the race and felt confident I could break 22 minutes (7:20 pace). Ten days earlier I had passed the three mile mark in a 10-mile race in 21:57. I had been training fast 3-milers with A and I had bet her that I would beat her this year. I thought I was in the same league as her. (Training for the Capital Challenge with A and Jake on the W&OD Trail outside the Beltway in Fairfax, Virginia.)

The early Wednesday morning out-and-back gun-timed race in Anacostia Park SE was down a flat two-lane blacktop along the south bank of the Anacostia River. I was too far back in the starting chute to get a good break out of the gates. It took me 15 seconds to cross the start line. A was up front with G, our team’s ace, and they both got away cleanly.

The first half mile I had to run on the grass where the spectators were standing to get clear of all the slow moving runners. I did a 7:10 first mile by race time. I thought I was on track for my PR, with 10 seconds already in the bank. I also knew for sure that I wasn’t going to catch A, who was motoring. (A was ready for this race and, more importantly, its aftermath.)

The second mile was not so great. I started noticing how humid it was, which bothered me after the long cold winter. I did a 7:34. I thought I could still PR if I could step it back up the last mile. It wasn’t going to happen. I started crawling up the road thinking, I could stop and still do allright if I walked it in from here.

I let myself and my team down by sluggishly running a 7:45 last mile. I never picked it up. I finished at 22:30 (7:30), 21 seconds slower than last year. A year older, that much slower. (Entertainment was provided. A local juggler with a running problem. Instead of headphones, try this when you're bored with running.)

I had teammates looking to me for help in the scoring. I didn’t dig deep.

A year ago I finished in 165th place. This year I fell to 217th place, a veritable free fall.

Our rock star, G, poured it on for us. He was one full minute faster than last year, finishing in 18:14 (6:05). He improved his place from 43rd a year ago to 29th. (G came ready to play. How about finishing 29/670?)

A also stepped it way up, running 55 seconds faster than a year ago. She finished in 21:09 (7:03) and improved her place from 162nd to 145th.

Those two gave the team a combined gain of 31 places from a year earlier. I gave it all back plus some with my solitary loss of 52 places from a year ago. I also realized that A is seriously faster than me and when she runs with me, it’s nice that she lets me hang with her.

C ran an excellent time of 23:34 (7:51) in his first race.

However, the worst was yet to come.

As a veteran runner, a former EMT, and a coach, I tell people who run that Rule Number One is: Don’t Injure Yourself. But sometimes the mania of running causes me to use less than my best judgment. Our captain wasn’t close to 100% this year. I knew it. Still, he came to play. But I should have let the team lapse this year.

After I finished the race, I watched for our captain. Soon he came into view with A running alongside of him. She had gone back after finishing to encourage him. He was hurting, running on pure determination and she was watching him closely. Two hundred yards from the finish, he stumbled. A caught him and prevented him from going down in the road. Thanks for being there, A.

The medical personnel were there in a flash and checked out our captain as a precaution. Being the tough competitor and former 3:00 marathoner that he is, our captain insisted on finishing. Which he did.

He was okay.

We finished 36th out of 124 teams this year.

I walked the four miles back to work. It was an hour of reflection.

I was depressed for awhile about this event. How shall I put it? It was a personal letdown, which also let teammates down. I did not pull my weight, much less exert a positive influence. I exercised suspect judgment, and someone came close to getting injured.

So much angst over 21 seconds. You’re not supposed to feel this way about running. Fortunately I have running to help me get over it.

ACLI Capital Challenge 2006

A year ago when I was new to the board of my agency’s Wellness Committee, having recently started the running program at work, my agency received a Congressional invitation to the Capital Challenge 3-Mile Race. It was forwarded to me.

This was the twenty-fifth consecutive running of this invitational race, held every year on the first Wednesday in May at 8 am. I remembered Bex telling me that she ran it the prior year. The invitational race’s concept is simple–in the spirit of collegiality a race is run where individuals race each other on teams competing with other teams within their particular category.

There are six categories of teams: Senate, House, Executive, Judicial, Print Media and Electronic Media. Each team has five members, one of whom must be a female and all of whom must finish. All team members must be on the staff of the team captain (i.e., no guest runners).

All team members score. Each individual’s place in the larger race is added to his team score, and the lowest scoring team wins. And the most important rule–each team must be headed by a bonafide chief. This means a Senator, a Representative, an agency head, a judge or a media bureau head. Chiefs are generally older, and they are often non-running folks. Some might say this is a sure recipe for disaster (like in Heart Attack). (The race sponsors always put on a nice post-race buffet. 100% of the proceeds from the race go to the DC Special Olympics.)

I put together a team at my agency. We were in the executive branch and last year we did pretty well. Our team captain won an award for placing in his individual category of Captains over 60. We finished 7th out of 28 teams in our category and 15th out of 113 teams overall. In the executive category, we finished one point ahead of the eighth place team and two points ahead of the ninth place team. We were way off the pace for sixth place. In other words, everyone on the team finished exactly right and we nailed it.

The results are always skewed by the service teams. Last year the Navy or Coast Guard teams took three of the top five spots in the executive branch. Five out of the first ten runners were servicemen. These are young guys from the service running teams who are stationed in DC, probably for this very event. Their team captains are usually some forty year old ship’s commander, not a sexagenarian agency head who normally runs twelve minute miles twice a week to keep the weight down. So the members of my team informally threw out three of the top results in our category and unofficially awarded ourselves fourth place.

Our rock star, G, finished in 19:14, in 43rd place out of 642 runners. The rest of our team finished in 122nd (M, 21:22), 162nd (A, 22:04), 165th, and 424th (26:59) place. (M leaving after the race. The race shirts last year were a distinctive mustard color, easy to spot on the Mall for several weeks thereafter. That's RFK above the treeline on the other side of the Anacostia.)

I have mentioned each of the staff runners by initial in previous posts. Yours truly came in fourth for our team in 22:09. Our woman, A, beat me by five seconds, charging by me the last hundred yards. I was injured at the time (hamstring, a miserable injury) and could not respond to her late surge. Remember me saying that the difference between seventh and ninth place in the executive category was a mere two points? Her late sprint undoubtedly secured seventh place for us. A did a great job and deserved her place three spaces in front of me. Everyone on our team did a great job, especially the team captain who stunned everyone with his excellent time. It was a PR for me by six seconds anyway.

The race itself was a delight. It was held in Anacostia Park in SE along the Anacostia River on a level two-lane blacktop. It was a one and a half mile sprint downriver, a tight turn around a cone and a run back to the finish. It was flat and fast, so long as you could get out of the crowded starting chute in good shape (the scoring is by gun time, not net time).

Everyone was happy. The Wellness Committee even had a little get-together later at which the Chairman presented the team captain with a commemorative token.

Furthermore, I am old enough to know who Jim Ryun is. He was the Kansan racing star at KU who for nine years in the sixties and seventies held the world record for the mile. It seemed like he was always on the cover of Sports Illustrated when I was growing up. He made racing exciting. His epic battles with Kenyan Kip Keino were legendary. Until he got thrown out with other Republicans last November, thanks to the Decider, Ryun was a congressman from Kansas. His Team Ryun always did well at the race, winning the House team category in 2005 and 2004. Well, here I was in the same race as the most famous runner in the world from my boyhood. I even finished ahead of him by 36 seconds. (I think he was running injured.) Talk about attending a dream fantasy camp!

That was last year. This year it all went very much differently from the start. I knew it would be much more uncertain but I thought I knew two things for sure. I would break 22 minutes finally, and I would give A a battle and hopefully beat her in the race.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. Last Wednesday was a fiasco. It made me feel as low as I have ever felt about running. I guess I’ll tell you about it in a later post.