City Council President Stephanie Rawlings-Blake might be Baltimore's mayor-in-waiting, but there was no waiting yesterday.
At 6:49 a.m. yesterday, her office issued an e-mail titled, "Council President Declares Victory in 9/11 'Run to Remember' Challenge." The 5K road race began 11 minutes later.
The news release was embargoed until 7 a.m., but still! Don't runners usually cross the finish line before claiming victory?
"I learned from working on campaigns that you declare victory as early as possible," said Rawlings-Blake spokesman Ryan O'Doherty.
Rawlings-Blake, Mayor Sheila Dixon and State's Attorney Pat Jessamy challenged each other back in July to participate in the race, a fundraiser for the Baltimore Police Foundation and the city Fire Department. Even before the runners stepped off, O'Doherty said, race organizers had told him that the council prez's office had more people on its team than the other two. As a percentage of employees, anyway.
Dixon's team had 25 runners, while Jessamy's and Rawlings-Blake's each had 31. And Rawlings-Blake's office is the smallest of the three.
Of course, everyone's a winner at this sort of charity event. Which is why Jessamy's office also claimed victory.
"We are still calculating the final numbers, but it looks like the BCSAO had more registered participants than the Mayor's Office or the City Council!!" the state's attorney's office e-mailed its employees at 10:53 a.m. Any state's attorney staffers who'd run were urged to make themselves known, just to make sure they'd been counted.
Jessamy spokeswoman Margaret Burns said she missed the as-a-percentage fine print. O'Doherty stood by that and said it was too late to add runners to the various office teams. "The numbers I gave you are the final numbers," he said.
Dixon, alone, seemed to have accepted defeat. How could she not? In a stunning upset, the fitness-buff mayor crossed the finish behind Rawlings-Blake, whom the mayor often kids in public about needing to work out. The council president finished the 3.1-mile race in 36:41. Not exactly Olympic speed, but enough to beat Dixon's 41:07.
The mayor, whose spokesman said she'd pulled a muscle during the race, shouldn't feel bad. Turns out Rawlings-Blake pulled an inadvertent Rosie Ruiz. Intending to run the 1-mile race, she got confused on the course and finished with the 5K runners.
"I did more than 1 mile, but not the whole 5K," she said.
