Racing Around the World to Christmas

[Me before starting the Race Around the World]

A lot has been going on here at the Pole, most notably Christmas! Christmas was effectively celebrated on December 24. It started off with the Race Around the World. This 2.3 mile race is heald every year, and makes a tour of the different science areas at the Pole station. This year was my first year being here for the race!

When I woke up in the morning of December 24, the weather outside was quite bad. Warm (around 0 F), but really bad visibility and quite windy. Between runners, walkers, skiiers, bikers, and float-drivers, there were about 70 people participating in the race. We all lined up at the start at 10am, and with a "Ready, Set, Go!" we were off.

[Racers taking off for the Race Around the World] Photo credit: anonymous

I decided to start off easy, and work into a good pace, so I let the fast runners stream ahead of me from the start. Pretty soon though, I started passing people. The track was quite hard to run on - it is obviously on snow and they had groomed it that morning, but the persistent wind had blown several inches of soft snow over the track in numerous places. This combined with the very flat light made for difficult running conditions.

[Running in difficult conditions towards SPT] Photo Credit: anonymous

[The Race continues] Photo Credit: anonymous

[Molly Joggeling to the finish] Photo Credit: anonymous

I rounded the first corner, passed a bunch of people on a down-hill, then blew past a few more on the following up-hill. Pretty soon, I realized that there were only 2 people in front of me. I settled into a good pace that I could keep up to the end of the race. For the remainder, I was distinctly behind the two leaders and comfortably in front of the next runner.

I ended up placing 3rd, with a time of 21:06! That was great - I had absolutely no expectations of being competitive at all, so it was a pleasant surprise. For my podium-finish I was awarded a $50 gift certificate to Amazon! The scientists did well this year - the winner was my friend Jamie from the Keck experiment, second was a really nice spanish guy Carlos from the IceCube experiment, and the female winner was Sarah from Keck. Sarah ran a 100-mile trail race, the Wasatch 100, earlier this year, so this race was nothing for her!

[Me arriving at the finish line]

After the race, we all ate a delicious brunch. Then I sat in the sauna for some time, chatting with friends. This was followed by a movie marathon - Indiana Jones then Primer. A well-deserved nap came next, then a delicious christmas dinner. It felt really good to relax for a day, since I hadn't taken a full day off work since arriving at Pole.

As with Thanksgiving, Christmas dinner was fantastic! The appetizers included highlights of Scallops and Idaho Trout. Dinner featured Grilled Maine Lobster and Beef Tenderloin Wellington, accompanied by wine poured by servers.

[Christmas dinner at the Pole - yeah, I was under-dressed.]

[My Christmas dinner plate]

[The Christmas Menue]

After dinner there was, you guessed it, a dance party! My friend Brad took charge of the DJ duties, and pumped out endless streams of 80's dance music - which was perfect for the occasion. We danced the night away, finally retiring by 2am.

On the work side of things, our project is generally going well with the usual hiccups. Our fridge is not getting as cold as we need it to get, but we think we know the reason for this. Today we are warming up after the first run to try fixing problems. We now have everything we need to put together the full focal plane, so the next cool down of the fridge and detectors should be exciting!