The Indy Marathon Chase

“Whoa, check out that guy! He makes Speedy Gonzalez look like Regular Gonzalez!” –Philip J. Fry

Melissa runs marathons. I chase them.

Saturday she ran the inaugural Indianapolis Monumental Marathon.

I rode my bike to several different places on the course to cheer her on and take pictures.

The marathon went rather well for Melissa, and as a result, less well for me. For you see, she ran so fast that half of the places where I went to watch the race I arrived too late and missed her. The first time it was clear that she had already passed so I didn’t wait around long. The remaining times I waited several minutes before I could be sure she had already passed.

We were both wearing GPS watches, so using that data I put together this animation using Mathematica that shows our locations throughout the race. Melissa’s path is blue, Rob’s path is red. It’s kind of funny to watch my red path wait around at a certain location while Melissa moves farther and farther away.

Update 2009-04-17: I have written an entry for my company blog showing in great detail how I made this movie.