Muddy Buddy Chicago 2010

In two days Heather and I are getting ready to do Muddy Buddy race!
This is a race that some friends of ours told us about last year and couldn't say enough what a great time it was. So this year Heather and I have decided to give it a go and have been training and preparing for it!

The race starts at 7am and is about 5.5 miles long. The race starts with one team member on the bike and one team member getting ready to run. At the first mile the person on the bike completes the obstacle then starts to run. The person who was running does the obstacle and then gets on the bike. You repeat this process all the way to the end. There you wait for your team mate and complete a long crawl through the mud pit all the way to the finish line.

While we own a number of bikes and are enthusiastic bike riders, neither one of us owns a mountain bike. However, this is another example of the miraculous ways our community comes to help us and our friendSilvau loaned us his Trek Mountain bike!

So armed with this nice bike we'll see how we do, how much fun we have, and how dirty we get!
Stay tuned for results and pictures!

Live Web Cast of Talks for ICHEP 2010

I wanted to share this link that will let the general public watch and follow the proceedings from talks that are currently going on at one of the world's most important Particle Physics conferences ICHEP (International Conference in High Energy Physics) 2010

http://webcast.in2p3.fr/2010/ichep/index.php?live=go

Lots of great results from CMS and Atlas as well as some exciting things coming from CDF and D0!

Enjoy!

Fermilab 2010 Triathlon Results

Well my results are in for the Fermilab Triathlon and it is basically what I expected. I managed to finish 15 out of 20 individual competitors owing much of it to my terrible swimming.

It took me 29 mins to swim the 800 meters (which was the slowest out of all the swimming times put up that day I'm sad to say). The average time for the competitors was 21 mins with the fastest being done in 10 mins flat!

The biking I did much better finishing all 20 km bike ride in 42.5 mins (which was the 7th fastest time for all the biking...and I did it with a fixed gear bike! The average time for biking was 45 mins, so coming in 3 mins faster was a good result, and the quickest time was done in 31 mins!

Finally the 5 km run I finished in 29.5 mins (which was the 12th fastest time...so not quite as fast as I wanted, but by that time the struggle in the pool had taken its toll). The average time for the run was 28.5 mins with the fastest being done in 19 mins.

Most importantly, congratulations to the winner Mika Versterinen who finished the whole thing in 1 hour and 3 mins! (My total time was 1 hour 45 mins...so I got smoked!) And thanks to the Fermilab Graduate Student Association for putting on the super fun event.

Secondly and maybe even with greater importance, Thanks to my wife Heather who came out early in the morning, volunteered to count laps in the pool for the other swimmers, cheered me on at every transition, and kept me full of bananas and water till I was done!You are the best wife a man could hope for and push me to do better at everything I try!

All the results will be posted here http://www.fnal.gov/orgs/gsa/calendar/triathlon/tri10/

Doing less bad is still doing no good (Part 5)

Well, here it is. After 1/2 of the year here are my results in monitoring how much I drive my car every week.
25 weeks in I have driven 4518.6 miles averaging 181.7 miles per week. That is about 81 more miles per week than I would have guessed initally and WAY more than I want do every week!
If I break this down into monetary terms (something that should persuade anyone) and I estimate that gasoline in the Chicagoland area has been (as estimated by IllinoisGasPrices.com) has been around $2.90 per gallon and I'll give my Chevy Aveo the benefit of the doubt and say I get 30 miles to the gallon all the time...that mean I've spent $436 in gas this year! Not to mention oil changes / maintenance / insurance / parking etc...

Now, my goal is to get my average miles per week down below 100 miles...however I work at Fermilab finishing my PhD, which is 26 miles from my door. I should really be going there at least 3 times a week even though I can do a lot of work from home (it is important to have your face shown and to be where the action and expertise is).
If I use the metra and my bike it is about $5.50 each way (a little less if I buy a ten punch pass...and don't lose it) plus about 8 miles of biking each way. So if I just bought metra tickets and came to the lab 3 times a week that is 33 dollars a week plus 48 miles of biking coming to (in 25 weeks) $825 plus 1200 miles on the bike...double what the car costs in terms of gas...that seems unreasonable!!!
So the answer (since moving isn't an option nor is getting a different job) must be a hybrid solution where I refuse to use my car in any other capacity than just going back and forth to work (as long as gas stays under 3.50 per gallon or so) occasionally biking to the lab using the Metra with a ten punch pass (lower rates that way) and finding a reasonable substitute (carpooling with my lab mates / rock climbing people) to help keep my miles per week down.
So while I'll continue to plot my progress and keep this online I think this analysis has taught me two things
1) My expectation for what I do week-to-week only favors the good weeks and ignores the bad ones! I drive way more than 100 miles per week...but not every week...and the weeks I'm over, I'm WAY OVER.
2) The solution to this problem is non-trivial and should be a working hybrid that needs constant attention.
I think I want to get an odometer for my bike to start to see how many miles I in truth bike every week...to see if using my bike more is a way to offset the total miles I travel.
Expect more interesting plots with bike miles included to come!