While walking through the AC grocery store on Thursday, I
was surprised to see a bulletin for the "Top of the World" marathon,
half marathon, and 5k. Really? Many towns and cities have road and trail races
throughout the year, but it was not something I expected in Barrow. I also
didn't expect Alistair Rogers (BNL) to see the bulletin on the dinner table and
suggest, "Hey, let's form a Team NGEE and run the 5k". This should not
have been too surprising as we did something similar last year at the American
Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting in San Francisco. That time, we were cajoled
into the race by Forrest Hoffman, one of our climate modelers working on the
NGEE Arctic team. That run took us along streets that meandered in and out of
the waterfront, so why not a brisk 5k through the native Inupiat village of
Barrow and along the Arctic Ocean?
The race was conveniently scheduled to start at 11:00pm.
Remember that Barrow enjoys 24 hours of daylight at this time of the year. I
guess this was a good time, we could warm up and rest up after
working a long day on the frozen tundra. Pasta was in order for dinner,
compliments of leftovers from the previous evening...plus a little ice cream. We
figured the calories would be burned off later.
Alistair, Victoria Sloan, and I were ready by 10:15pm, just
slightly after my usual bed time. We had registered earlier in the day, so it
was just a matter of attaching our assigned race numbers and heading off the
starting line at the Fred Ipalook Elementary School. To our surprise, there were
over 60 people registered for the race. We even met graduate students from Craig
Tweedie's lab and students from Robert Hollister's lab. Kim and
Christina were there from David Lipson's lab and Karl Newyear, Chief Scientist
for UMIAQ was there as well. It was a 'who's who' of energetic people from the summer
scientific community in Barrow.
A young woman sang the National Anthem, a prayer was
offered, and the race director said "GO!". Alistair bolted to the
front and managed to stay among the leaders throughout the race. We ran past
the Airport, turned right at the Arctic Pizza restaurant where we enjoyed a slight downhill, only to be
followed by a slight uphill over by the Post Office. We crested the hill near
the AC grocery store, made our way past the auto store, and then into the final
stretch as we rounded the corner back to the elementary school. It was a
literal 5k tour of Barrow in 25 minutes. Best I can tell, Alistair had a Top 10
finish followed by me and Victoria. It was a smashing success for Team NGEE and
one that will surely spark more than one dinnertime story in the coming
months!
All in all, it was a great way to end what otherwise was a
pretty busy week of research. Oh, and while we chose to run the 5k, there were 4
runners in the marathon and 9 in the half marathon. I imagine that more than a
few people will now check off a box that was previously on their bucket list.
Now that we know of this event, and assuming they have it next summer, we
talked about maybe running the half marathon in 2013...well, maybe we will decide
that after the AGU 5k in December.
