Reach the Beach!

LGO is all about teamwork and how to create, develop, and lead high-performing teams.  What better way to test this skill than to run a 205-mile overnight relay race with 9 of your classmates?  Well, that's exactly what we did this weekend!

It all started a few months ago when I got the crazy idea to to a Ragnar Relay in upstate New York.  I figured that this would be a great chance to find a team of 11 other co-conspirators who would join me.  Unfortunately, after assembling most of the team we discovered that there were some logistical issues with getting to the Adirondacks without missing some serious class time.  Luckily for us, there was a much-closer but equally-challenging relay: Reach the Beach.

Reach the Beach Course Map: Cannon Mountain to Hampton Beach

Here's how it works:

1. Assemble a team of 12 runners and come up with a team name
2. Rent 2 vans and pack them full of people, running gear, and lots of food
3. Run 205 miles by alternating runners through 36 legs (3 each) over the course of about 30 hours

In practice, it turned out to be a little more complicated than that.

1. One of the scarcest resources during LGO is time, so it's always a challenge to find people willing to sacrifice two days to do anything and even harder when that anything involves running double-digit distances in the middle of the night and sitting in a van for about 24 hours in a 34-hour period.  But then again, this is also an amazing group of students who are always willing to try something new.  So after a bit of recruiting, we were able to assemble a team of 12 to tackle the race.  Our team name started as the "LGO Bandits" aiming for a cops-and-robbers theme, but it morphed into the "Beaver Bandits" in honor of our MIT Mascot.  Unfortunately, some unforeseen circumstances came up last week and took our roster down to 9.  With some last-minute recruiting we got the count up to 10, but ended up having to head to the race down 2 runners.  Oh, and Weng Hong ended up crashing his bike 5 days before the race and may have bruised/broken a rib.  That man is an beast!  
2. The van logistics turned out to be fairly simple (other than the fact that one of the runners we lost at the last minute was renting one of the vans).  After some last-minute shuffling we ended up with 2 stylish Dodge Caravans for our journey.
3. Then it was time to run.  We headed up to Cannon Mountain early on Friday morning, arriving with plenty of time to check-in before our 12:00 noon start.  It had rained hard the night before, but as we approached Cannon the clouds began to part to sunny skies.  That was short-lived though, and soon we were all soaked to the bone while waiting for the race to start.

The runners were divided into the two vans, with the first 5 in one van and the remaining 5 in the other.  That meant that each van had a 3 - 4 hour break between each running set.  So after the first van started, those of us in the second van headed to the town of Lincoln to have some lunch (questionable Chinese food) and do what any 5 guys stuck in a minivan would do: go shopping!  It turns out that there's a Bass shoe outlet in Lincoln and what better way to replace soaked shoes than to get some stylish boat shoes for less than $20!
After our break, it was our turn to run at about 4:00pm.  The first van had a series of awesome runs and by the time it got to us our team was 30 minutes ahead of what we had predicted.  We kept the trend going with great first legs of everyone.  It took us a little time to figure out the logistics of transitions but before long we were transition masters.  Once I started running, I discovered that one of the key motivations was to pass other teams (called a "kill" in relay-speak).  Catching up to and passing people became my focus, and I ended up covering the 7.2 miles at a 7:20 pace with 12 kills.  We handed off to the first van again just before 9:00pm and had a little time to eat and nap.

The second leg for us was the night shift; starting at 12:30am and going till 5:30am, covering 35 miles between the 5 of us.  My leg started at 1:30am and covered 9 miles of rolling hills.  I was actually pleasantly surprised that I didn't feel sore from the first run and was able to push the pace and get more kills.  It didn't take long before I remembered how much I like running hills (something that Boston is missing for the most part), and before long I was racking up the kills.  Final stats were 8.98 miles, 7:34 pace, and 18 kills.  After everyone in our van had finished, we attempted to get some sleep but it was hard to come by.

Our third leg picked up at 10:00am and went through 2:00pm, covering 28 miles.  I was again surprised that my legs weren't feeling the previous runs but I was starting to run out of energy.  I was somehow able to rack up a record number of kills with 24 over the course of 8.6 miles at a 7:35 pace, but by the time I crossed the transition line I was completely spent.

Since we were covering the race with 10 runners instead of 12, 6 people had to run a 4th leg.  This drove the average distance to 20.5 miles but everyone did a spectacular job on their legs and we ended up heading into the finish almost two hours ahead of schedule.  Sunny took on the last leg and we all joined him for the final 100 yards of running on the sand.  In the end, we finished in 29 hours and 29 minutes, placing 200th out of 468 teams.  Not bad for a bunch of nerds from MIT :-).

But that's enough writing.  This race was all about the fun times that we had as a team, and the many adventures that we had along the way.  Thanks Cynthia, David, Adam, Sunny, Guadalupe, Ariel, Karl, Sean, and Weng Hong for an amazing experience!

Here are some shots that capture the fun...

Sean getting ready to start in the pouring rain

Eager Beavers getting ready to start the race

Boat Shoe Shopping Spree!

Studying the course - this was Leg #2 for me

For having ran 205 miles, I have very few shots of actually running.  Here's Cynthia coming into transition after her fourth and final leg!

We Reached the Beach!!!

Finish-line Celebration

Happy at the Beach :-)

Medals all around, well deserved by an amazing team.

Back to School...The Fall Lineup

We're back into the full swing of things here in Cambridge.  After a full week of Sloan Orientation (see Yalu's post here), we jumped right into the Fall selection of courses.  Steve also has a great post on the emotional impact of leaving the summer and jumping into the fall.

This is when the uniqueness of the LGO experience really come to light.  Although we are all getting MBA's and MS Engineering degrees, we seem to constantly find ourselves doing a delicate dance between the worlds of business and engineering.  Some general observations so far:

1. Sloan is incredibly diverse.  41% of the MBA class this year comes from outside the US and I'm really looking forward to hearing the unique perspectives from all over the world.  On my core team of 6 people, we cover the US, Russia, and Singapore.  In the larger cohort, there seems to be a lot of students from Latin America, Asia, and Eastern Europe.  We've already had some great discussions and cross-cultural talks and I look forward to many more throughout my time at Sloan.
2. Grocery Shopping is Overrated: If you get on enough club lists and cross-reference them with all the events in Sloan and the engineering colleges, there is essentially FREE FOOD available somewhere on campus at any given time, 7-days a week.  There is even technology available to point you towards the free food (i.e. the "vultures" e-mail list).  Out of the last two weeks, I think I've only cooked 2 or 3 dinners and packed 1 or 2 lunches.  Such is life as a graduate student!
3. I have no interest in being a straight-up MBA student.  We had our first "Career Core" session for the MBA program yesterday and there was absolutely no mention of manufacturing industries, which reflects the views of the class as a whole.  The top target industries were: 1) management consulting, 2) finance/banking, and 3) high-tech.  It was somewhat interesting to gain insight into those industries, but I maintain that my passion and career interest remains in actually building tangible things.
4. I have no interest in being a straight-up engineering student.  We've had several mixers with the various engineering departments in the last few weeks and I've gotten to know several of the MS and PhD graduate students.  The discussions always revolve around what research they are doing, how many years are left in their program (which is usually a lot), and how stressed they are about finding an adviser or prepping for the qualification exams.  This has made me realize that while I really do like engineering, I don't quite have the mindset to jump into a research-based graduate program for an unknown number of years.

The conclusion of all this is that LGO is definitely the program for me.  We are fortunate to experience the best of both worlds and  end up being able to carry on intelligent conversations with engineers and investment bankers alike.  This really is what sets the LGO program apart from any other program out there and I have absolutely no doubt that coming here was the right decision.  It's funny that the LGO lounge has become a clubhouse of sorts now, a place to reunite with our classmates from the summer and some of the 2014's who are back on campus.  It has definitely become a community.

With that said, my fall lineup of classes definitely shows the combination of management and engineering, with a few seminars thrown in for good measure:

• The MBA "Core Four":
• 15.010 (Economics): Case-based studies of econ, focused on management decision-making and general market understanding.  Having already taken econ, I'm looking forward to getting a different perspective in terms of how to use the data in business decisions.
• 15.515 (Financial Accounting): Focuses on the fundumentals of financial accounting, and spends time discussing cases and the trade-off between the many different options for accounting.
• 15.280 (Communication for Leaders): Although this is an independent class, it integrates heavily with 15.311 and the Sloan Career Development Office (CDO) to help us develop our communication skills.  From everything from impromptu Toastmaster-style presentations to formal project report-outs and self-reflection essays, it looks like this will definitely challenge us to work on our communication styles.
• 15.311 (Organizational Processes): An interesting course that dives into the dynamics of teams and organizations and looks at them through three distinct lenses (strategic, political, and cultural).  This class also involves our biggest project of the term, which entails finding a company in Boston undergoing a major change effort and analyzing their organizational dynamics.
• Engineering Electives:
• ESD.260 (Logistics Systems): All about supply chains, and the engineering and numerical work that goes into establishing and optimizing them.  This looks to be a high-paced and somewhat numerical class that covers a lot of topics that are familiar but I don't know much about (i.e. how does Starbucks get fresh bananas to every location in the world on a daily basis?).
• 16.71J (The Airline Industry): This is definitely my favorite class so far, and my first class from the Aero/Astro department.  I knew I had found the right place when I walked into the classroom and noticed a giant mural on one of the walls depicting a 767 in a high-rate climb out of some foreign airport.  The class is essentially a survey-level exploration of the airline industry, covering everything from route planning and revenue management to aviation safety and fleet selection (of course the answer to the last subject should always be: All Boeing!).  As our prof said on day 1, "This class won't teach you enough to run an airline, but you'll understand something about every aspect of the industry".  Sounds like fun!
• Seminars:
• 15.792 (Global Operations Seminar): This is the flagship LGO seminar in which a speaker comes in every week to discuss their business and a particular challenge that they have faced.  The lineup for the fall includes some great speakers from Nike, Apple, Amazon, and many more.  It is one of that many highlights of the LGO program and I'm definitely looking forward to some interesting presentations.
• 15.S25 (Leadership and Ethics Seminar): This is another mostly-LGO seminar, but focused specifically on issues around leadership and ethics in the industry.  Our instructor, LGO's own Vah Erdekian, is a veteran of the electronics industry and was most recently the senior VP of operations for Cisco.  He brings in some great speakers throughout the term, and supplements their presentations with additional wisdom from his own career.  This is another portion of the program that I am really looking forward to.

In case you're thinking "geez, that's a lot of classes", it is.  This is MIT, such is life!  It actually isn't too bad.  Essentially I have class/recitations on Monday - Thursday from 8:30 to 11:30 and  1:00 - 5:30, with any spare time filled in with group meetings or individual homework.  Then the evenings are filled with more reading and prep-work for the next day.  As I've said before, it's not that the work is hard; there's just a lot of it.  The key is to stay ahead of the curve but leave time for all the other adventures that Sloan and MIT offer.  More to come on that topic in a few weeks.

A departing pic...

Food!