A few weeks back LaunchSquad participated in the JP Morgan Chase Corporate Challenge, a 3.5-mile run around Crissy Field and Fort Point just below the Golden Gate Bridge. This marked the 5th anniversary of LaunchSquad’s participation in the event and resulted in our best performance to date. We had more participants than ever (16 runners), and apparently we brought on board some ringers in the past year!
The Squad’s Squad was led by the blazing Reed Lyon, who finished in the top five overall for all runners (we’re talking 5,693 runners from 259 companies) with a very impressive time of 17:35 (uh, that’s a 5 minute/mile pace!). Needless to say, Reed lived up to his expectations of being the ringer runner and we couldn’t be more proud.
Reed was closely followed by recent team addition Emilie Cole, who lead the charge for the LaunchSquad women by clocking in at 23:15, an overall 13th place finish for all female participants.
These amazing times led to our best finish ever as a team, coming in second overall for all teams that participated. Unfortunately the official time didn’t go down in the official books due to some fine print rules, but we know in our hearts that we did pretty darn well (and yes, if you add up our top times, it equals 1:33:10 – 2nd place!).
Also to be acknowledged are Jesse Odell for spearheading the snappy uniforms, as well as Corey Lewis for throwing the first ever LaunchSquad luau in his very own backyard. Mary the steel-drummer DJ provided the entertainment, and we even had the cops called on us! It was quite the rager on a Wednesday night, but hey, we couldn’t help but celebrate our victory.
All in all it was a great experience as always, but we’ve got a lot of work to do to top this year’s performance! After a brief hiatus to rest our sore legs, training packets are being compiled for the ’09 season …