Live Earth 6K

Last week at work, I had the opportunity to help put on and watch a 6K run/walk--a real change of pace since I've been so focused on the race I'm competing in. This race was the Dow Live Earth Run for Water 6K. It was a corporate sponsored event through Dow Chemical and the organization called Live Earth whose mission is to spread awareness of the worldwide clean drinking water crisis. The 6K distance was symbolic of the distance many women and children have to walk each day to get clean water. On April 18, they held a series of races all across the globe: New York, Los Angeles, Singapore, Mexico City, Buenos Aries to name a few. Local celebrities and musicians even made appearances at each one. (If you google Dow Live Earth, you'll get plenty of videos and pictures.) Our event was on a much smaller scale and was held on Thursday, April 22. We had 128 participants, which actually is a huge number for us. Even though I work at company with over 1200 employees on-site, and we have a large fitness center membership, our health promotion department really struggles for participation in events. Luckily, this one had coporate backing to it and was a dual effort between Public Affairs and Health Services.

Not only was this my first "big" race to help plan and organize, I also got the job of being the timer which put me right at the finish line, able to see what times people were hitting. It was one of the moments that make me so proud to be a trainer. There were 3 people in particular that had either never run this distance before or had run that distance the week prior to the race for the first time. They all finished with incredible times and in some cases even surpassed the goals they had set for themselves. Two out of these three people were personal training clients of mine, so I was especially happy to witness their race and be able to congratulate them immediately.

After the race, we realized the course was only 3.5 miles instead of 3.7, making it a bit shy of a 6K. In the scheme of things, it doesn't matter. I have full confidence all the runners and walkers that day could have gone an extra .2 if they had to. And besides, the 6K distance was symbolic--not a common race amount.

Today, I decided to run the course myself. It was 2 full laps around the buildings on the DAS campus then 1 lap around the pond right outside the fitness center. I had made it a point to work on speed in the few days leading up to the mini, but today I could tell I was running much faster than my normal pace. I didn't allow myself to look at my watch along the way, so imagine my surprise when I crossed the "finish line" and saw 29:43. I calculated my pace (using the true mileage of 3.5): an even 7.0 mph. I could NOT have run this same time/distance combination on a treadmill. 7.0 is the speed I crank the treadimll up to only during the last half mile or less of my run. Weird.