Day 28: Festive Insomniac

For the past weekend, Fairbanks was a flurry of activity with all sorts of festivities celebrating the summer solstice. There was the Yukon 800, the festival and game, and on Saturday night, the Midnight Sun 10K.

The race was interesting for a few reasons. I didn't run it (I biked 30 miles earlier in the day to make myself feel somewhat less guilty) -- and my knees & shins thanked me for sparing them the torture. However, virtually everyone else in the city seems to have participated in the race. A whole bunch of people walked the route behind the runners as well.

Among the people who chose to run the route, more than a few of them did so in costume (there was some sort of contest), and the costumes ranged from funny to downright ridiculous in a few cases. The ridiculousness was combined with the fact that many of the costumed runners finished with respectable times. There was a 9-year-old that finished in 42 minutes, and an 80-year old who finished in 69 minutes.

The start of the race was signaled by a cannon being fired by a group of army soldiers. After that, several of the soldiers picked it up, and ran the race while carrying it. They entered the race in the middle of the pack, and finished it in 61 minutes. At the end of the race, they shot the cannon off 3 more times. I'm spending a good part of this week analyzing the "boom" they made that got picked up by our Infrasound array in the woods. So far, we've been able to pinpoint the origin of the cannon shots to within a few feet of where they really were.

More photos are posted on my Flickr stream.