Columbus Day weekend - Keweenaw

Not really have enough time to write .. but enjoy the pretty photos :)

Marquette Half-Marathon

Disclaimer: Took a quick 2 mins break and wrote this during work.. tins of mistakes. Please forgive me.

I am got into another race again! And this time, Hannah also managed to convince Grace into running for the race. It was Labor Day weekend, and we were up at Hannah's parents place in Iron Mountain. The race was on Saturday, but Hannah and I had to meet our weekly run quota, thus we went for a easy 13-mile run on Friday as well :). 

The run was in Marquette, which was about an hour drive from Iron Mountain. We woke up at around 4.30am, and after a quick coffee and breakfast, we were on our way. It was a nice, breezy drive, and we were at Marquette around 7am (EST). We took the shutter bus to the starting line, and of course, we had to quietly "mock" all the "super runners", people who are over-dressed etc.

Got our tags, checked in our belongings, and ready for the run. We took joy in looking at various runners in their colorful running gear, and people looking very serious doing their stretching. Took a few quick photos (Hannah insisted on it :) and we were on our way! We stayed behind most of the runners so that we would be more inspired to run passing them along the way...

I had told Hannah and Grace prior to the run that I would picked up my pace after 2 miles, and see if I can push my limit on this race. I finished the race at around 2hrs 1 min, with an average pace of 9.12mi/hr. Not too bad.

Of course, there were beer after the run! and even more beer and food when we were back in Iron Mountain. Until the next run :)

Muddy Monk Nearly Sane 13.1mile race

Our first race in USA! This weekend, we did a half marathon race - Muddy Monk "Nearly Sane" 13.1mile. It was a relatively small race organized by the "Muddy Monk" club, running through Half Day Forest Preserve, IL. It was termed a trail run. but in fact, we were just running on a bike track, so there wasn't any "power-walking" uphill, running downhill and jumping over tree roots as what Hannah and I had expected. However, either way, it was still fun, and the crowd/ atmosphere was very supportive and nice.

We signed out waiver early, collected our super-neon-green t-shirts, our bibs, a 13.1 mile sticker, and headed back to the car to relax and have our coffee. The race started at around 8am, with the organizer shouting through a construction cone because he had left his loud-hailer at home. I couldn't really hear what he was talking about, but it was fine because Hannah knows the running trail well, and it turned out that they did a great job marking the trail!

The day was a bit cloudy, but it was humid. Hannah did not really have a good run as she was plagued with numerous issues - stomach virus, heat, high humidity etc. However, we persisted and finished the 13.1 mile! There might be even some tears along the way :P. As we were resting after the race, watching runners coming through, we started talking to this man (Jerry) who has been running for a big part of his life. He is 70 years old, former military, have knee issues, and still participate in as many races as he can!... Kudos to him.

The best part was AFTER we crossed the finishing line :) Of course, we were there for the race, but there are other important issues as well. We received the medals as we crossed the line, and promptly I headed for the beer! I grabbed one for Hannah and the other (less hoppy beer) for myself. Hannah liked the beer, but I wasn't a big fan of it.. possibly because I do not like hoppy beer very much. The beer was sponsored by a local brewery After I made sure Hannah had settled down with some ice-water (and beer) and some pretzels, I joined the long queue for some Chicago Hot Dog :D.  I was delightfully amused with a sign that says "if you need ketchup for your hotdog, please put it yourself :( " The highlight is the ":("... It is blasphemous to put ketchup on your Chicago hotdog! The hot dog is topped with yellow mustard, chopped white onions, bright green sweet pickle relish, a dill pickle spear, tomato slices or wedges, pickled sport peppers and a dash of celery salt...VERY delicious! Overall, it was a well-organized race, and we definitely look forward to another race with them.

Woods Hole STAMPS workshop

Meren, Tom and I attended a bioinformatics workshop at Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory in the first two weeks of August. Actually, Meren is teaching a couple of classes on Oligotyping and Anvi'o, and Tom is TA, while I am there as a student. The workshop is over two weeks, with the first week covering mostly 16S rRNA analysis techniques, and the second week concentrating on metagenomics. Although I am already quite familiar with the 16S rRNA curriculum, it is handy to revisit those knowledge and also keep up to date on what is new. I was more looking forward to advancing my knowledge in metagenomic analysis. In addition, it was also an excellent opportunity for me to network and meet some potential research collaborators.

The workshop was very intense, with classes starting at 9am and did not end until 10pm daily (with lunch, dinner and coffee breaks in between to keep all of us awake). There was a Monday off, and most of the others went out to Martha's vineyard for their day off, while I was in the laboratory catching up on some outstanding stuffs with Meren and Tom. 

Although it had been a really busy two weeks, I still managed to find time to keep up with my daily morning runs before breakfast. Cape Cod is definitely very pretty in the summer, and thus no doubt that the whole place was swarmed with tourists (kinda reminded me of time on Waiheke). We had a welcome dinner and reception at the end of the first week, and we had lobsters! It was hard and messy work to get to the lobsters meat, but this is my first time eating Cape Cod lobsters, and it was very delicious.