Back off, man. I'm a scientist.

The end of this post will all come back around to the title, but I couldn't resist continuing with the theme.

So this post isn't about running, since our 12 miler (10:09 pace) on Saturday was pretty uneventful (besides the fact that I was responsible for setting out the water stops and misjudged distances - damn you google maps! - and put them at like 3.2 and 9.1, when they should have been at 4 and 8 - oops!). Anyways, I decided that writing about bike rides is okay because it is cross-training :-)

Well two summers ago, when Lisa and I were at nerd camp, we shared an office with three other students and we designated ourselves Team Lazy. Really we weren't that lazy, but compared with the industrious international students in the other office (Team Not From Around Here), we seemed pretty lazy. But that is probably because we thought that drinks at bars with nautical sounding names followed by working until 4am was a good way of life. Anyways, that is totally off topic. The bottom line is that we have lazy streaks. Today I realized just how lazy I am.

When I go off on bike rides, I am usually content to average about 12 mph. I blame the fact I don't go faster on the fact I just have a hybrid and I don't have toe baskets or clipless pedals. That is much easier on blaming it on the fact that I am lazy.

Normally I am not in any rush to get anywhere so my slow-pokiness doesn't usually bother me. But, after starting to bike and swim more when I was injured, I decided I want to do the Cornman Triathlon (motto: "Outstanding in its field"). Now I mostly have no time goals for this - I just want to finish. But, I also don't really want to finish last. Almost all the bike times are under an hour, so I really want to do that leg in an hour, in which case a 12 mph pace isn't going to cut it.

Today I rode my bike to Ledges State Park with four boys who ride bikes better than me. Unlike Joe, who runs faster to chase girls, I needed to ride fast because:

1) As a matter of pride, I didn't want to be pathetically slow. Similar to all those times I am the only girl in any of my fluid mechanics classes, I feel like I am representing all of womankind, so I must not suck.

2) I had never been to Ledges, so I would get lost if I fell too far behind.

But anyways, I discovered how much faster one can go if they are not lazy, and turn the gears up higher. Who'd a thunk it? I ride my bike almost every day, but since I am riding to school, I don't like to get too sweaty, so I never turn the gears up. I was pleasantly surprised that I did the first 14 miles in 53 minutes. I was still the slowest one, but hey, I didn't expect to be the fastest.

So Part II of this ramble is because reminiscing about Team Lazy reminded me we still need to think of a team name. I am horrible at this kind of thing. Apparently lots of other people are as well, since half the google searches that end up on this blog are for things like "good team name."

The best I can do is come up with is the tongue in cheek title of this blog. Actually, I can come up with some nerdy ones. As of now, one third of the team is fluid dynamicists - my best attempt at a bad pun for that is "The Drag Force."

Or, I figure between the nine people on the team at the moment (yes we are short three! recruit your friends!) there are eleven science degrees and six more in progress - most of us qualify as nerds. On the surface, Kori looks like a hip young professional, but I have known her long enough to know that she is probably a nerd too :-) So we could be "Nerds who Run." Or I think it would be fun to have t-shirts for the relay that said on the back "Back off, man. I'm a scientist."

Man, I wish I were more clever.

This is an addendum to this already long rambling post, but I just had to share and since I was rambling about Team Lazy and science I figured I would attach it here. The crazy Israeli faction of TLZ e-mailed me this morning and I laughed and laughed and suddenly didn't want to admit to being a fluid dynamicist. He sent me this paper:

Meyer-Rochow VB, Gal J. "Pressures produced when penguins poo: a study of avian defaecation" Polar Biology 27: 56-58