Today, I ran on a relay team in the Take a Hike Ike Sprint Triathlon at Deussen Park on Lake Houston. It was a lot of fun, despite being cold and windy.

The team was Linda (a coworker of mine) – 500m swimming, Viroj (our boss) – 10.8 miles cycling, and me – 3 miles running. However, due to today’s weather, they cut the swimming portion (something about whitecaps in the lake), so the race was run 3 miles/bike 10.8 miles/run 3 miles. Linda hadn’t brought her running shoes, so I did both of the running legs of the race. I’m not sure what my times were, but I know that they were decent considering the cold wind blowing in my face and the fact that I couldn’t feel my toes for the first half of the first three mile run. I’d like to someday do a triathlon myself, and so would Liz.

Here’s a video Liz took of me crossing the finish line:

We got second place in the Co-Ed Relay division.

Here are the pictures that Liz took before, during, and after the race.

I’ll add more pictures when I get them from Viroj. I’ll also update with our completion time when I see the official results. We finished in 1:57:55, though I don’t know our splits because (I’m guessing) we didn’t have the chip on our ankles (both Viroj and I carried it in our pockets).

Liz and I have some more races planned; stay tuned.

This morning, we ran in the Klein High School Bearkat Bash for the third year. I finished in 30:21 and Liz finished in 30:27; both of us improved quite a bit over last year’s time of 31:43. And now we have new personal records!

Also, due to the fact that my birthday is on Tuesday, I managed to “win” first place in my age group (I wouldn’t have placed if I were in the 30-34 age group, but I’m still 29 for the next three days). Technically, the overall winner (who finished in 15 minutes and change) is in my age group, too, but they don’t allow duplication of awards. And to be fair, he and I were the only male participants in the 25-29 age group. But it’s still a major award and I won, to paraphrase “The Old Man” from A Christmas Story.

Here I am with my first place finisher award:

all pictures

“Projecting Outsourced Contact Center Agent Availability” by S. Myles, V. Buraparate, and S. Kumar G was presented at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Financial Institutions Center Contact Center Forum 2008.

[abstract]

Liz and I ran in the 2008 Chevron Houston Marathon on 1/13/2008. Liz finished in 5:31:01 and I finished in 5:50:05. It was a lot of fun! There’s more to come regarding how the race went, but for now, here are our results. (The “pictures” links don’t work yet, but they should by this Friday.)

“Inventory Management for Automated Drug Dispensing Machines: A Service Level Policy” by J. Kobza, S. Myles, S. Dunagan, G. Heath, and S. Liman was presented at INFORMS Seattle 2007.

[abstract] [presentation]