So this week at work we are celebrating National Employee Health and Fitness week. Every day this week there are various events that the company is putting on, generally over lunch. Monday, there was a wiffleball tournament. Yesterday there was a 3-on-3 basketball tournament, cornhole, punt pass and kick, and a dunk tank. Today, a 5K race, tomorrow a kickball tournament, and Friday there is badmitton. It is weeks like these when Carolyn gives me some crap about the “difficult” job I have.

I didn’t do wiffleball, but yesterday I did take part in the 3-on-3 tournament. There were 4 teams signed up, and annoyingly they didn’t do any type of double elimination or round-robin tournament – just a single elimination. More annoyingly, the 2 best teams (including my team) got matched up in the first round (rather than in the finals). An interesting note – when trying to scout out our opponents, these were the adjectives used to describe one of the players (coming from 3 separate people)

• Aggressive
• Competitive
• Hyper
• Egotistical
• An A**hole

Sounds like a real great guy, huh? I was worried that he was going to start a fight or throw a punch or something. Happily though, the game went fine. They were aggressive and competitive, but not annoyingly so. It was a hard-fought game but we lost 10-8. They had this big guy that was quite good. We had a pretty tall guy on our team, and he held his own, but that big guy was hard to stop. I played well, and besides the annoyingness of the tournament structure, I was happy.

Today we had a 5K. The route was a little bit long (measured here at 3.24 miles, as compared to 3.10 for an actual 5K). When I found out this morning that it was long, I IMd several suggestions to the organizers of how the course could be shortened to an actual 5K distance, but they weren’t very interested. I’m not sure why – it wouldn’t have been that hard to do. Keeping the turnaround where it was made sense because it was a good spot to turnaround, but it wouldn’t have been difficult IMHO to just move the start or finish lines. Anyways… the race itself went well. I started up at the front, and while I was quickly passed by all the really fast people, I did manage to keep somewhat of a pace with them. Well, behind them. I did slow down and walk one section at about the 2.7 mile mark, but not for very long. One annoying part of this was the fact that this was a run/walk. Now that, in and of itself, is not very annoying. But because it was an out and back course, and on sidewalks rather than streets, we ran into a particular problem, pardon the pun. As I (and I’m sure many of the other runners) were running back to the start/end point, MANY of the walkers were walking 2-abreast outbound, taking up the whole sidewalk. And while some (a small percentage) made some attempt to go single file or share the sidewalk, most just continued walking and taking the whole sidewalk, forcing us to run in the grass to get around them. One of my co-workers mentioned that a heavier woman waylaid him (i.e. actually collided with him). I managed to avoid hitting anyone but did have to get on to the grass about 5 times or so. This was also kind of an unofficial race, so there was no traffic control. Luckily I avoided getting stopped by any traffic lights, though at one point the light turned green against me while I was in the crosswalk. I waved to the lady as I continued running in front of her :-).

When I crossed the finish line, I was given a time of 26:01, though the stopwatch I was wearing said 26:27. Doing some pace calculations, that is a 5K time of 25:18, which matches up about with what I saw when I crossed the 3.1 mile marker (in my head). That would be a new (unofficial) personal record, beating the old record of 25:39. Of course, that time was on a long course too – I just can’t win! My goal for this race was 25 minutes, so I ended up being just short of that. Still have the goal of the sub-20 minute 5K by the end of the year.

So, I was deciding that next year, I may just have to take over this fitness week thing. These events are just not being run up to my standards. Now, I appreciate the work that these folks are doing (I really do!) and I realize how difficult it is to organize these things and get volunteers and such. But in addition to the annoyances of the 5K route being long and the basketball tournament being too short, the cornhole tournament bracket got all messed up. There were like 78 teams enrolled. But due to various problems, the bracket just got all screwed up. Some teams got like 5 byes, only having to play 2 or 3 games to get to the finals, while others were playing 5 or 6. Now I understand that I am somewhat of a loser in this regard. After all, it should surprise nobody that knows me that I used to create giant double elimination brackets for myself, and play nerf basketball games on my bedroom door with every country in the world being a participant and going through the tournament (Goooo Central African Republic!) But it really would not be that hard to get it right. Heck, 20 seconds of googling got me a PDF of not only a 64 team bracket, but a 64 team bracket that was even designed for cornhole!!

Anyways…. I will (if you’re lucky) update you on how the kickball tournament goes tomorrow…