The Workforce Team Challenge is always the largest race in Albany, and only open to corporate teams of at least 4. Because of those factors, this race always attracts both the fastest runners in the area along with thousands of walkers. The average pace spanned sub-5 minutes/mile to over 23 minutes/mile! But that diminish the enthusiasm and crowd support for the 8000+ runners.

The course is actually fairly difficult, but very enjoyable. Starting and finishing in front of the New York State Museum, the course winds though quaint city street before making a tour of Washington Park (with the tulips still in bloom!). The only drawback to this course is the 1/2 mile uphill that the race starts on. But it isn't too bad if you're properly warmed up. Especially considering that you get to finish the race by running down that same hill! It's one of the longest down hill finishes I've ever run.

The race starts at an unusual time, 6:25PM. This is so that the local TV stations can show the start of the race live at the end of the evening news.

This is a brilliantly organized event, put on exclusively by volunteers. Everything from the registration process, to the expo, to the pre and post-race activites are world class. And results are streaming live to the internet so you know your result as soon as you finish.

One really neat, and unusual feature, of this race is the team scoring process. There are three divisions : Male, Female, and Co-Ed. With your top 4 runners times added together. But what makes this race unique is that you can have an unlimited number of runners on your team, and you declare which runners are in which division AFTER the race. So if you don't think you have a chance in one division, you can swap runners into another division. The post-race scoring strategies are actually pretty fun to follow.

Because this race starts and finishes near the NYS Capital, after normal work hours, parking is never a problem. In fact, because of the downtown start, a good percentage of the runners walk to the start from their offices.

This is a wonderful event that really does a lot to get non-runners participating.