December 20, 2014: The Atlanta Christmas 5K

Goal: To have a fun race wearing a silly T-shirt with some of my students

Several weeks ago, I was invited to join a few of the chemistry graduate students in the Atlanta Christmas 5K.  They were entering as "Team Holmium" and were planning on making T-shirts for the event.  I figured it would be a fun race to do, and so Bonnie and I signed up.  On Friday before the race, Erin Schuler brought the race T-shirts by the lab, and they were fantastic!  She had singlehandedly decorated five shirts with glitterglue, writing out Merry Christmas in the full structures of the corresponding peptides:

Methionine-Glutamine-Glutamine-Arginine-Arginine

Cysteine-Histidine-Arginine-Isoleucine-Serine-Threonine-Methionine-Alanine-Serine

My students all know that I have an unfortunate mental condition, in which tiny imperfections in chemical structures seem to leap out of the page in my vision.  Therefore, Erin knew that she had to get the structure completely correct on all five shirts, including every single stereocenter, because her professor was definitely going to notice.  Erin's grade?

A+  !!  

Erin Schuler, Samantha Iamurri, Jessica Hurtak, Bonnie Youn, Frank McDonald

"Four chemists and a lawyer ran a 5K, and ..."
(feel free to finish the joke in the comments!)

In the week leading up to the race, I didn't run at all.  Not only was my ankle bothering me, but my cold was pretty bad midweek and I even took a day off after my fall semester grades had been submitted.  The plan was to take it easy and just enjoy the race as much as possible.  There were about a thousand people in the race, and we just lined up wherever we found a spot.  It was relatively crowded for much of the route, especially for those of us in the middle of the pack.  The first couple of miles were fairly mild, but after the 2-mile marker we began going uphill.  At the left turn onto Greenland Drive, we went straight uphill.  I passed a few people in this area only because I was able to continue a slow jog, but it was a relief to reach the crest on Hillpine Drive.  After heading back downhill on Wayne Avenue, we turned left onto Courtenay Drive, where I began to speed up a bit for the finish.  Turning left onto Highland Avenue, and another left onto Morningside Drive, I could hear the announcer's voice at the finish line.  I passed a parked car with a 13.1 sticker on the left back windshield - oh, that was my car, LOL, and with that inspiration went to high speed for a strong finish.  I cleared the finish line at 29:52 on the clock; with the starting delay, my official chip time was 29:14.    

Although this was the slowest 5K that I have clocked, it was a fun experience, even though the ankle was a little sore from start-to-finish. The plan is to take several weeks without racing, just easy runs to keep in shape, to get everything back to 100% health. 

"Four chemists and a lawyer ran a 5K, and ..."

Can you finish the joke?  Below are a few that were posted in response to this question on Facebook:

... and all I got was this clever t-shirt!
... what came out was a patent for a new Breaking Bad compound
... the chemists were all charged, but the lawyer was the catalyst for getting them off.