Sunday, August 26, 2007

Moving In

Yesterday morning, I finlly arrived at Michigan Tech after a 600 mile drive from home. We stayed in Big Bay Friday night and drove to Houghton in the morning. The drive from Big Bay was about a third on dirt roads, which made for slow travelling and a very dirty car as I followed my parents. Overall, though, the trip went well with no major incidents.

Moving in went as well as could be expected, and I'm beginning to learn my way around. My room is on floor 2 which I would call the third floor because there is a ground floor as well. From the people I've talked to, it seems that the lower floors have higher cielings, so that as well as being able to go places more quickly are benefits to being lower in the building . My window faces M-41 and the rest of campus, so the view is good. Some of the trees across the highway are already turning brown and orange.

That's about all I can think to say at this point. I'll probably have more to write about as orientation week progresses. Maybe I'll get around to posting pictures of the campus and my room eventually.

Saturday, August 11, 2007

Run Thru Hell

It seems that the only things I find interesting enough to write about lately are running events! This morning I went with a group of runners to participate in the annual Run Thru Hell. Both 4.8 and 10 mile runs are offered. This was my third time for the event and the second time I ran the 10 miles. I was very pleased with my run. I completed the race in 1:08:01, a definite improvement over last year's 1:14:46. I came in 119th overall and 64th in my age group. The start of the race as usual was a long process, as all of the runners had to cross a timing mat which is about 10 feet wide. With thousands of runners this is not a fast process. Luckily the same timing mats that cause this delay later allow a computer to subtract your start time from your finish time making for a fair race even for those starting last in line. A by-product of this is that you never know when the person running next to you started (unless you saw them cross the mat), so their time may be way ahead of (or behind) you even though you finish right next to them. To me, though, that doesn't really matter, because I'm more interested in improving my previous years' time than being faster than the other runners. All in all I had a great time at the run and I hope everyone else did too.


Me shortly after the drawn out start...


...and just before the finish.


Checking the results.