Cold and Wet and Laughing

One of my friends has pointed out that so far I have mostly posted about running so far. This is true, so to add some variety to my blog I am going to instead start this post by recounting my first orienteering experience. As I hinted in my last post, I participated in an orienteering race called Hug og Hei held in Bymarka (a big park area full of marshes, lakes, streams, woods, ridges, and hills west of the Trondheim city center. This particular race has two rounds: the first is around 18km and the second is an additional 12km if you connect all of the points with straight lines, but the actual routes would be much longer due to the terrain.

Before the race I wasn't sure how I could possibly cover that much distance on terrible terrain, but luckily I would be running with some friends (pictured below). We decided it would be easier if we went as a group of five so that we wouldn't have to do the navigation all on our own. The day before, Paulo decided to motivate us/shatter our confidence with this video. I still cringe every time I watch it, but we joked about the video periodically during the race.

Vanja, me, Paulo, Hilde, and Andi looking fresh before the start. Please note the majestic lighting.

The start was essentially a mass of people sprinting down the same trail heading for the first point. Slowly the crowd split off depending on each person's opinion/guess of which route would be the best. The pace was fairly unrealistic for a several hour race, and we slowed down significantly before we made it to the first point. I had no idea what I was getting myself into in terms of the terrain. Initially our strategy was to stay on the drier trails. I say they were drier but not dry because Trondheim had received plenty of rain that week, and the best footing available was trails thick with mud. By the middle of the race we had pretty much given up on avoiding mud, water, and other obstacles. We cut across the marshes, scurried up and down ridges, and marched through streams. This wouldn't have been an issue except that the weather was not exactly ideal. There was frost on the ground at the start of the race, and during the race we received everything from sun, to rain, to snow. Gotta love the predictably unpredictable weather in Trondheim.

Cutting across marshy fields was the worst. It felt like running on a thick sponge saturated with icy cold water, with an extra layer of standing water on top. Our feet would numb and then thaw with every crossing, and the unsupportive footing was exhausting. Along one section I think gravity was broken because we were running/crawling up a long steep slope that was essentially a marsh. Yet the water was not running downhill. I feel that I cannot do the course justice with my descriptions, so I'll stop there.

We ran/walked/climbed/crawled for over five hours, and when we got back to the base station the official said, "I am so sorry, but you have not finished the first section in time to start the second section." We all laughed, thankful that we didn't have the option to continue with the second round. We estimated that the route we had taken was roughly 25-30km long, and we were quite satisfied.

Apparently October has been a good month for getting wet. My college running coach Dave would sometimes tell our team that if you are going to do something stupid, you should make sure you aren't the only one. I took his advice a little over a week ago when I decided I wanted to go swimming in the lake up in Estenstadmarka (a wooded area with a bunch of trails near my place). I knew of a few friends who had jumped into the lake earlier in the season. I suggested the idea to my running club as a sort of ice bath after a little road race many of us were doing over the weekend. The direct quote from the team trainer Halvor was, "I'll join out of sympathy for your naive idea that the bathing outside now won't kill you." Keep in mind that it is October now and the water in the lake was probably 10 degrees C (50 degrees F) or colder. Even so, I found two more victims/friends who were willing to join the excursion.

On a cool and windy Saturday afternoon, the four of us trudged up the steep and muddy paths leading to the lake, set our outer clothes along the shore, and charged into the lake. An icy sensation swept over my body immediately. We started swimming out into the deeper area, but I only made it roughly 15 meters before my feet were numb, at which point I decided to stop. By that point I could no longer touch the bottom, and we all started to hurry back to shore. As I dried off, my nervous system could no long distinguish whether my skin was blazing or freezing. We snapped a few photos (which I still need to upload) to document our accomplishment/stupidity. Every picture shows us shivering while simultaneously smiling idiotically. Apparently this is our idea of fun, and somehow I'd like to think that Dave would approve.

Blog Fail

So I think I should start with a visual representation of my blogging history. Naturally I chose to make an Excel plot of my five posts so far and added a fourth degree polynomial fit, which is shown below (Figure 1).

Look at that nice R-squared of 1. Pretty impressive, I know. For now just ignore all of the improper and misleading aspects of this plot and data analysis. As you can see, this trend is not looking good for my loyal, avid readers (who definitely still exist). So to catch up on the last/lost month of activity, here are a few highlights of my September adventures in Norway. Don't be scared by the length of the post since there are many pictures. As a side note, this weekend I tried out orienteering, but I'll save that October pleasure for another post.

In mid-August I signed up for the decathlon hosted by my running club (NTNUI Friidrett club). Over the course of two days I confirmed that I am pretty terrible at throwing a variety of objects and jumping in a variety of ways. I destroyed my abs trying to pole vault and seriously thought I would injure myself in the 110m hurdles. On the bright side, although I don't know what scoring system was used, I think I scored points in every event.

Facebook provided me with a couple of pictures that really capture the awkwardness of the hurdles. The first has been described as an "epic kung-fu pose," which is probably a good call. Based on the first picture one might think that I was going to ninja kick the hurdle (or that I'm being tased), but the second picture suggests otherwise. It actually looks fairly decent as long as you ignore my trail leg tucked to the inside rather than the outside. Also please note that I'm wearing my training shoes. Not the best for a decathlon, but running spikes were not my priority while packing for Norway.

A week after the decathlon, I ran the Oslo half marathon with some of my NTNUI Friidrett teammates. A few of us are in the picture below. I ran with one teammate or another almost the whole race, which was awesome. I started with Paulo and Andi, but we eventually all became separated. By 5km I found Hilde (who you might remember from my Trondheim half marathon post (yes I just linked to my own blog and am now using nested parentheses)) and we stuck together for pretty much the remainder of the race. This was the most crowded race I've ever been in, and from start to finish we were wading through a stream of people. Despite this, Maddy, who is a Fulbrighter in Oslo (and St. Olaf alum) that I met during orientation, spotted me and cheered for me by name. She didn't even know I was going to be running. Long story short, I ran a 1:28:35, which was a 7:59 improvement from Trondheim. So if I naturally decide to do a linear fit of these two data points then... Anyway, it was a happy day. You can find more info if you search for me and then click on my name on the results page. There is even a plot of my pacing with varying horizontal scale that is almost as misleading as my blog fail plot. Almost.

Paulo, Andi, me, and Joachim at the start

Finally, as of a little over a week ago my computer refuses to turn on. My computer genius friends think it's the logic board, so fixing the computer will be too expensive but I will try to save the hard drive. The real trick will be trying to find a replacement while here in Norway while avoiding Norwegian prices and the 25% VAT on electronics shipped into the country. As a shameless plug, does anybody traveling from the U.S. to Europe in the near future want to volunteer to transport a computer? Just kidding. Kind of. (But really, I'll travel almost anywhere in Europe to meet you.)

Trondheim Half Marathon

So I should really follow up on my most recent post now that the Trondheim half marathon was a full week ago and I don't want anybody thinking it did me in. Needless to say, I survived the race. At the start of the race we had some of the warmest weather I've experience here in Trondheim, which was admittedly still cool enough to be awesome running weather. But of course we needed to have a little rain during the race in order to be sure we were still in Trondheim, where weather is predictably unpredictable. The course was two laps of the same loop that started in the city center and wound around along the river and through the city.  Somebody clearly put a lot of effort into designing the course so that would remain fairly flat despite the city being pretty hilly in general. Thank you mystery person: I am grateful. Also, you know a race is too legit to quit when they organize pop-rock aerobics for warming up.

During this race I learned that the Norwegian expression for encouraging runners is "hei ja" or something like that. I started laughing when first I heard this because it sounded a lot like the Chinese expression "aiya!" which roughly translates to "doh!" and is used to convey frustration. Funny? You don't even know. This kept my simple mind amused for much of the race.

I finished in a time of 1:36:34 which I'm certainly satisfied with considering how little training I did beforehand. I ran slightly positive splits from the first lap to the second, and by the end I was really starting to feel tired. I'm not exactly sure what kind of fatigue, but you can probably find the answer at my friend's running blog. After the race I got some pictures, including the one shown here with Hilde, one of the other members of NTNUI Friidrett. She was really fast. When I got back to my housing village one of the people I live with pointed out that my finisher medal looked cheap. He's right. But considering the median result of my previous races has been obtaining nothing but my own sense of accomplishment, I think I'll gladly accept a cheap medal as an added bonus.

So, yeah. I successfully ran my first official half marathon coming off of a month of near-inactivity. I wouldn't recommend it, but I definitely don't regret it.

Three fingers

I've arrived at a new low point in my life: I can count on the number of runs I have done in the past month on one hand. Well, on three fingers actually. Yet my calves are presumably still too large to allow me to wear hipster jeans (probably a good thing). My mileage dipped in June, then went back up in early July before flat-lining shortly before coming to Norway in August. Now that I'm (almost) settled in Norway, it's time to resuscitate! I am officially announcing to you, my loyal blog readers who totally exist, that I am running the Trondheim half marathon two days from today.

Too drastic? Definitely, but that's the only way I work. As far as I know, this is the first time that I have been living in a city while it is hosting a half marathon. Having run only three times in the past month, I realize this is quite likely going to be a terrible way to start (but hopefully not end) my half marathon running career, but I'm not going to let this convenient opportunity pass me by. Even if I'm not fit right now, it will still be an awesome experience. And if I'm kidding myself, there's no going back because I already paid the registration fee and picked up my number and timing chip. So... meh.

Luckily I won't be running alone the whole time. I recently joined the athletics club (friidrett) here at NTNU, and a few other members of the team are going to be running the half marathon. Of the teams I've been on before, I'd say the NTNU friidrett club is most similar to my middle school cross country team, as hilarious as that sounds. We're just a group of around 15 guys and gals who enjoy training together but don't take ourselves too seriously. They are the perfect group for me to train with while I rebuild my base. The team was kind of shy at first, but they are starting to open up. I'm just glad I'll have some familiar faces.

The typical four questions

Every time I meet a new person here at NTNU, I am faced with the same four questions. Since I'm just starting out this blog, I thought running through these questions would be an appropriate way of introducing myself. Here are my somewhat well-rehearsed answers, although I occasionally edit them down depending on how interested my new acquaintance actually seems.

Q: What's your name?
A: Michael

Q: Where are you from? ... What part?
A: The United States... I went to school in Minnesota, but originally I'm from Iowa.

No use getting any more specific when they haven't heard of towns with fewer than 20,000 people. Sometimes upon request I give a city name. Typically their response is a clueless expression, and I'm left doubting that they knew any cities in Minnesota or Iowa in the first place.

Q: What do you study?
A: Materials science.

So this was a lie until classes started a week ago. Still, it was the easiest answer I could provide without explaining my whole transition from math/physics undergrad to materials science grad school. In fact I tried to explain all of this to my flatmate, but I just ended up confusing him. He couldn't believe I could change fields without starting over with a new bachelors program. But yes, I can. Because math and physics are that good.

Q: So why Norway?
A: well... uh... meow.

"Why Norway?" is usually less of a question and more of a statement. And it's always spoken in a tone that suggests I am crazy for choosing to come freeze my butt off for a year in the most expensive country in the world. So I really need a good answer to justify my decision to come to Norway. Unfortunately, this is by far the hardest of the four questions for me to answer. Not because I don't have good reasons, but because I don't have a simple, straightforward answer. Partially my decision was based on NTNU's hilarious commercials, but I sometimes I need people to take me seriously. Accordingly I usually ramble through some combination of the following: Norwegians have a good attitude toward the environment and getting outdoors, NTNU has some of the best energy-related research in Europe, and a good chunk of my ancestry traces back to Norway. Luckily this typically satisfies the Norwegians. I'm often tempted to tack on to my answer a sarcastic snip somewhere along the lines of "And yes, I know what snow looks like: I've seen it in several movies."

I'm finally here! And why?

I have been admittedly horrible at keeping family and friends updated on my life. So in hopes of fixing this as quickly as possible, I have started this blog. Feel free to check up on me here, or send me an email.

To get this blog started, let me take a minute or two to run through where I am now and why. I just graduated from Carleton College in June with a B.A. in math and physics. Both are great fields of study, but I've always been more interested in their applications. Plus someday, maybe not for a while, but someday I'll need a job. Preferably a reliable one. For me this points to materials science and engineering.

Three weeks ago I arrived in Norway as a Fulbright grantee for materials science research and studies. Many of my friends are only familiar with Fulbright English teaching assistantships, so let me clarify: I am not teaching English, as fun and rewarding as that would be (no sarcasm intended). Instead I will be taking classes and doing research in the Materials Science Department at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). I found a sweet research group in the department that happily agreed to take me under their wing for a year. Since Fulbright is paying my bills, who wouldn't want a free research assistant? The general focus of the research group is silicon crystallization for solar cell materials. Given the chance, it would be stupid for me not to study energy technologies right now, and solar holds the most potential for promising advances (yeah I said it). So after trudging through a marsh of an application, jumping through several flaming hoops to accept the grant, and wandering through a hazy maze of immigration procedures, I am finally ready to go here in Trondheim.

Background information: check.