What you do after running 51 marathons in 50 states in 50 days (Read 691 times)

As many of you know, a fellow named Sam Thompson ran 50 marathons in 50 states in 50 days in 2006. And if you are saying "wait, didn't Dean do this?" Yes, he did. With a movie crew. But Sam did it first. Plus he ran a spare in DC... so 51 in 50 in 50. Anyway, my man Sam (he actually lives in my neighborhood) has done some interesting/weird stuff since then. Including today's fun. He's running to every branch of our library system. No, really. 27 branches and 60+ miles. He tried this in December, but it was during our big snowstorm and he had to bag it at 50 miles. The trick is that he is stopping at each one to get his card stamped, and so he has to do it before the libraries close at 8p. Local newspaper story. And while he's serious about running and in this case supporting the library system, YES, it is understood that this is, shall we say, goofy. He is one of those folks that makes you say "that's one nice guy", even if you only meet him for a sec.

Big deal- I can do that everyday with our library system. We have only one in the entire COUNTY

Loved that story. I had to forward the link to my Mom who is a librarian.

, well they made it 60 miles... but only managed 25 out of 27 libraries before the clock struck 8.

I hope he doesn't consider himself as a failure for only making it 60 miles....

That's just one of those mind-boggling things I can't absorb. Wonderful stuff.

NP complete. Awesome. It perhaps isn't the shortest route, and I have no idea exactly how he decided on it. I do know that 1) he lives near the start, so that's fun, 2) I *think* his wife works near the finish, though there were probably other considerations in choosing montlake for the finish, and 3) he's basically "corridor-ed" I-5 by trying to visit stuff on one side, cutting over down south, and coming back... there are traffic considerations... plus limited places to actually cross I-5 reasonably (although not THAT limited). Oh, also there are limited ways to get across that gash of water you see under 5 and 4 (and over 12). He chose the Ballard Bridge to get from 5 to 6 probably because that gave him easiest access to the west seattle bridge and west seattle where 6 and 7 are (edited to add: ignore this piece; that isn't west seattle). It's not just traveling salesman, but also traveling salesman where the different paths between nodes would have different weights/scores/strengths that change with time to reflect traffic patterns during the day. Assuming he really needed to start at 1 and finish at 12, that seems a pretty reasonable route to me. Optimal? Hard for say. Also, from Sam's perspective, it wasn't N=12. That's just the 'time points' that the paper chose for the pretty graphic. It was really N=27. Knowing the locations of the missing 15 library branches might adjust your view of shortest path choices.

Yeah. One other thing that hasn't come up is dealing with the hills. Without getting into too much detail, the right (east) side of I-5 is a series of hills. Cutting over too much from west to east would require evil hill climbs each time. For example, that route from 10 back to 11 follows the long crest of what's known as Beacon Hill (where Amazon's HQ is) and then down/over to First Hill (11) and over to the other side of Capitol Hill (10). Going from 7 to 8 and then continuing south would be easier hill-wise than going from 7 (or 8) over to 12... and then coming up again from 9 to 10. It's more complicated than that AND I know that Sam and Jonathan have no fear of hills... but that's something that I'd factor in if it was my game. (and that's the grossly simplified version. Turns out that 7, Queen Anne, is the highest hill in Seattle) You have made me want to go crack open Hopcroft and Ullman again, though. "Just for fun."

I'll have to map that out for our local library system. We only have 13 branches plus the main library but I bet it would cover a decent amount of miles.