[Debconf-discuss] Report from DebConf runners participating to the Van Cortland Track Club XC Summer Series 5K cross-country race
(to VCTC folks: please free to pass this on if you think that's worth it)
So, yesterday, at 17:30, 9 DebConf attendees met at Carman building of
Columbia University in order to go participating to the Van Cortlandt
Track Club bi-monthly 5km cross-country summer race.
After a simple trip to the end of subway line 1, we easily spotted the
group of race runners that were aggregating at one of the parks
entrances. I could easily spot those folks I ran with a few days ago
and who were amazed to see 10 of us joining (Marco Tulio arrived a
little bit later) and all (or nearly all...) wearing the DebConf
tee-shirt.
The race itself went well for all of us: everybody finished, from the
most trained up to the slightly less trained. The race course is quite
hilly with about 60m positive slope all over (estimated as of now as
I didn't process my GPS data), which roughly means 0.3km extra
distance, according to most runners' experience.
The race results haven't been published on the Van Cortlandt Track
Club web site but will certainly soon be
(http://vctconline.ning.com/page/xc-summer-series-results-2010).
Noèl Köthe was the fastest runner of our crew and did indeed finish
17th of the race out of 170 runners. He was ranked 2nd in his category
and thus got a price, which he shared with all DebConf runners, as
this was a muffin...:-). Noèl completed the race in a really good
20'50", which will be appreciated by those familiar with running. One
should notice that the first runner completed the race in about
17'30", if I remember correctly.
Gaudenz Steinlein was the 2nd runner of our group, completing the race
in 21'40", but he's trained to up and downhills and just said us that
compared to Swiss mountains, those were just a joke (according to his
sweat after the race, I definitely don't trust him on that
one). Between Noèl and Gaudenz, we had a local runner, namely Roman
Shtylmann, who happens to be a Kubuntu/Ubuntu/Debian user and just
popped at us when he spotted the "Debian" word on our t-shirts. Roman
will then be considered as part of our group!
Then came other runners of our group, namely myself, Iustin Pop,
Grégory Colpart, Luca "gismo" Capello, Justin Azoff, Marco Tulio,
Maximiliano Curria and Margarita Manterola.
All of us completed the race in less than 41 minutes, which is
great. DebConf and Debian thus got a little bit more exposure and
there are now probably 100+ people in Bronx who heard about Debian
and what awesome folks we can be..:-)
And, last but not least at all, I have to mention that Luca *did* run
with his kilt, including the sporran (the pouch that goes with a
scottish kilt and has to be worn in front of the groin of the wearer)
and did an amazing 30' or so result which is definitely impressive in
such a dressing. Local runners were definitely amazed and thrilled by
this.
For the record, in case this goes outside Debian, the kilt is using
the officially registered Debian tartan
(http://www.tartanregister.gov.uk/tartanDetails.aspx?ref=5936).
As a conclusion, I have been very happy to launch this idea of
participating to a "real" race in the neighbourhood. We met great
and very welcoming people. I would definitely recommend someone living
in New York City, or even spending some time here, to join the VCTC
runners, either for one of their races, or one of their Saturday
morning group runs
(http://vctconline.ning.com/page/sat-morning-group-runs).
List of DebConf participants to the VCTC race (country codes from the
IOC official codes list, not ISO codes):
Noèl Köthe (GER)
Grégory Colpart (FRA)
Gaudenz Steinlin (SUI)
Justin Azoff (USA)
Christian Perrier (FRA)
Margarita Manterola (ARG)
Marco Tulio (BRA)
Maximiliano Curia (ARG)
Roman Shtylmann (USA)
Luca Capello (ITA)
Iustin Pop (ROM)
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