sey085

It is springtime, which means that it is finally time to get outside, get some exercise, and work off all of those wonderful winter fondues. The last couple of weeks have been beautiful here (high 50s!), so it has not been hard to motivate myself to get outside and go running. Further, I am motivated by the fact that on the 24th of April, I will again be competing in the 20km de Lausanne . Now, given that I would like to do much better this year than last year, I have come up with a two-part strategy for success. Crosstrain! Do not have fondue (and wine) with Serge in Geneva the night before the race. With this plan, I cannot go wrong. Undoubtedly, some of you out there are asking, how do you intend to crosstrain? The answer is, of course, step aerobics. A few weeks ago, Jens, my officemate, and I went down to the Centre Sportif to sign up for gym passes for the semester. Now, the EPFL/UNIL gym is not particularly impressive -- even though there are ten times as many students, it...

Last Saturday, I competed in the annual 20 km de Lausanne . As you might have guessed from the name, it is a 20km race (nearly a half marathon) through the streets of downtown Lausanne. As Lausanne is built on a fairly steep hill, the course involves multiple thigh-burning climbs designed to crush both mind and body. Fortunately for me, though, I'd been training for a couple of weeks, so I was not entirely out of shape for the race. Unfortunately for me, though, I spent Friday night in Geneva with a bunch of moral degenerates and thus was not entirely recovered for the afternoon race. Fig. 1: The course layout. By my estimate, it passes within one block of 15 different apartments that I applied for and was denied. Loren was kind enough to take the train from Grenoble to run the race as well, so I was not all alone (at least at the start of the race). He had not trained at all for the race, but on the other hand, he was smart enough not to have too much fun Friday night -- so...