Operations research and financial engineering professor Alain Kornhauser GS '71 plans to run his 13th New York City Marathon on Sunday in an interactive way.
"I'm going to be a real geek. I'll have a GPS receiver in my back pocket attached to an antenna, which will be on my cap," Kornhauser said.
The GPS receiver will communicate with his Smart Phone, which will broadcast his position every five seconds.
Interested spectators can check Kornhauser's progress online and also send him messages. During the race he plans to respond to messages as he runs.
"I have to have some fun too when I'm running," he said.
Kornhauser said the experiment provides one motivation for running the marathon.
"To me, this is a substantial practical leap in technology," he explained. "Carrying a computer with a tracking device is almost opening up a whole venue of opportunity."
"When [my students] hear I'm going to run [the marathon] all wired-up, they think I'm pretty weird," he added.
Last year, Kornhauser outfitted James Mejia GS '04, but the limitations of technology required everything to be put into a fanny pack, which didn't allow for communication during the race.
Kornhauser ran his first marathon in 1986, completing 11 by 1996. He began because he was "embarrassed into it" by neighbor and Princeton Township mayor Phyllis Marchand who asked him at a gathering why he didn't run.
All 12 of Kornhauser's previous marathons have been New York City Marathons.
"New York on marathon day is like New York on no other day. Everyone is friendly, positive and cheerful," he said. "On most days people are focused on their own issues."
"My goal for this one is to finish, given that I haven't run one in five years," Kornhauser said. "My other hope is not to walk. I've never walked in 12 marathons."
In the early 1990s, Kornhauser achieved a personal best of 3 hours, 23 minutes, but he said he does not expect to finish close to that time this year.
Kornhauser's race can be tracked at http://live.alk.com/login.aspx?tracking=2Q2CT489001332&screenname=PrincetonU.
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