Cross de Sceaux [7.2k, 4⁰C, 28:14, 42nd & 6th V2]

This weekend, I ran another race (yes, yet another running post!) on my other “home turf” (since Malakoff is also my training ground!), Le Parc de Sceaux. This was the 30th Cross de la Ville de Sceaux (lagging one year behind Malakoff!) and there were many more runners on the starting line than last week (500 vs. 127) and some of them clearly good. (For some unfathomable reason, there are women-only (3.1k) and men-only (7.2k) races in this event.) Thanks to a strong wind, it was deadly cold if bright and sunny before the start (after it did not matter). I managed to stay with a V2 runner for most of the race, except at the very end when he pushed harder and gained a dozen meters. (It did not matter so much as we ranked 5th and 6th, almost two minutes more than the first V2…) This was not much of a cross-country race in that there was hardly any mud on the track and moderate slopes, just a few narrow passages through which runners had to squeeze on the first lap, not so much on the second.) My time is worse than last week, meaning I miss longer distance training (which are not compensated by longer bike rides!). But this was enjoyable nonetheless!

9th IMACS seminar on Monte Carlo Methods, Annecy

As astute ‘Og’s readers may have gathered (!), I am now in Annecy, Savoie, for the 9th IMACS seminar on Monte Carlo Methods. Where I was kindly invited to give a talk on ABC. IMACS stands for “International Association for Mathematics and Computers in Simulation” and the conference gathers themes and sensibilities I am not familiar with. And very few statisticians. For instance, I attended a stochastic particle session that had nothing to do with my understanding of particle systems (except for Pierre Del Moral’s mean field talk). The overall focus seems to stand much more around SDEs and quasi-Monte Carlo methods. Both items for which I have a genuine interest but little background, so I cannot report much on the talks I have attended beyond reporting their title. I for instance discovered the multilevel Monte Carlo techniques for SDEs, which sounds like a control variate methodology to reduce the variance w/o reducing the discretisation step. (Another instance is that the proceedings will be published in Mathematics and Computers in Simulation or Monte Carlo Methods and Applications. Two journals I have never published in.) Although I have yet a few months before attending my first MCQMC conference, I presume this is somehow a similar spirit and mix of communities.

At another level, attending a conference in Annecy is a blessing: the city is beautiful, the lake pristine and tantalising in the hot weather, and the surrounding mountains (we are actually quite close to Chamonix!) induce me to go running on both mornings and evenings.

snapshot from Annecy (#3)

snapshot from Annecy

Shishigatani [ein anderer Philosophenweg]

I managed to go running very early on Monday morning, as light came before 5am, a grey daw with no sunrise. It was only very mildly raining, which, given the overall humidity, did not make much of a difference! Heading to the eastern mountain Daimonij-yama was rather easy and I came upon a path by the Aruka-ji temple without really looking for it. This was not the usual path to Daimonji-yama, for sure, and I did not end up in the same summit, but it was a pleasant enough trail run in the woods (as pleasant as running in the mud, uphill, jet-lagged, and in 80% humidity can be!). As I was at the top by 6:30, I did not see a soul around. On the way back, I found the “path of philosophy” (Testugaku-no-Michi) meandering by a canal, which reminded me of Heidelberg Philosophenweg (although this one was much mode an inducement to philosophize!), and came back to the hotel after a 100mn run, hopefully not burning all my reserves for this afternoon talk!