Once a year, the CERN running club organizes a six person relay race within the main site of CERN. The distances in the relay are 1000m, 2x800m, 2x500m and 300m. And the race is open to the public. Now if your first impression is that this is a fun, leisurely race, mainly consisting of physics geeks trotting around the main site, let me correct you. This race is incredibly competitive. With teams training much in advance to win it. It is also very popular, with 76 teams (456 people) participating. But although most people take the run very seriously, we still insist on having geeky names like ‘Tile Missing Energy’ or ‘The Powercuts’ or ‘We’re cold’ (this IS a race at a particle physics lab after all).
For the past two years, I have run with a team of ATLAS women aptly named ‘The Running Athenas’ (‘Athena’ referring to the name of ATLAS’ detector simulation software). And for the second year in a row, we have taken second place! But this is also the second year in a row that we have lost to the CMS women’s team.
Hmmm… This does not bode well….
Here is our team on the 2nd place podium. Unfortunately this is not a particularly good picture but it is the only picture I have. But looking at this, I think it is pretty obvious why CMS is better. They have matching shirts. And it is a universal truth that any team with matching shirts runs faster.
So next year, Running Athenas, we are going to train! No excuses.
Or at a minimum we will get matching shirts.
Tags: ATLAS
