In the past few days I've managed to accomplish some minor personal victories. On Thursday, I ran my first ever Chase Corporate Challenge. It's a 3 and a half mile run around the R.I.T. campus. And I picked a great </sarcasm> year to make it my first run - it down poured the entire race.

I had trained a bit in the 2-3 months leading up to the event. Mostly running on the treadmill. And I quickly discovered that running outdoors, in the elements, and on pavement is a bit tougher than running on a treadmill in a nice, wind-free, climate-controlled gym. I mostly ran my standard 2 miles on the treadmill as a warm-up for lifting weights. Though a week or so ago I decided to run a full 3.5 miles on it just to see how I'd do. I couldn't even hold a 10-minute/mile pace, finishing it in about 36 minutes.

So when I showed up for the real event, I figured I'd be happy enough just to come in under 40 minutes. I was actually kind've shocked when I saw that my final time in the event was 33:18! I had managed to run 3.5 miles and maintain a 9 and a half minute pace. It's not real-runner numbers, but I was pretty happy with it. It was an experience running in a down pour, and to beat my goal by almost 2 full minutes was a great feeling.

Following on the heels of that mini victory, I played some weekend golf yesterday and ended up shooting a personal-best 82 (+11). I was still pretty sore from the run on Thursday, so I went into the round thinking I would probably not play well. However, I quickly discovered that the sore muscles actually improved my game for the most part. It forced me to swing easier, which kept most of my drives in the fairways.

I ended up with four 3-putts on the day, so I'm figuring if I could have putted a little better (maybe convert two or three of those 3-putts into two-putts) that I could have broken 80 for the first time in my life. I'd love to do it someday, but instead of setting that as a lofty goal, I think I'm going to instead set the goal of shooting in the low 80's more often.