Can you recognize the track?
It was a fun moment to run around the track at Panathinaiko Stadium. We did it together. Since ancient times olympic events have been hosted on the site. The modern Olympics began there in 1896. More recently, the marathon ended there in the 2004 Games. The Stadium was featured on all of the 2004 Summer Olympic medals, and will be continued to be featured on the medals soon to be awarded in Beijing.
We will have some news on all the MPC5121e based platforms coming to market soon and hopefully just in time...
The Community is the Computer - a Super Computer. Go Zig!
3 comments:
Most cool. How many times did you run around there and how long is the track? That marathon in Greece four years ago certainly was historical in its harkening back to the original marathon man of legend, ancient Greece's Pheidippides who raced back to Athens to report a great victory, said "we have won," and then keeled over and died from a heart attack. What a fun thing to do to run around there. You must have bribed the caretakers. ;)
Hi velcro_sp, the turns are twice as sharp as a normal track, with long straightaways making the turns tighter than most indoor tracks, but without any banking. One lap is 333.33 meters. The “infield” is only about 35 meters wide, as the two sides of the stadium are much closer to the track--and to each other--than the normal facilities of today.
Fortunately, as we were not running the full distance from the Plains of Marathon to announce victory over the Persians no heart attacks were experienced. :) We only made a couple of laps and no bribe was required. The Stadium is made of marble and also has the name Kallimarmaron (i.e. the "beautifully marbled") for this reason. It is a treasure.
When checking facts for the blog, we learned a few interesting things not mentioned above. For one, in the 1896 Olympics the winner of an event was awarded a Silver Medal and not one of gold. Gold was considered a symbol of crass commercialism, so first place awards were silver, and second was bronze. Plus, only two medals were awarded. There was not a third place.
Also, runners on the track had to run clockwise in 1896 (just think about what that would do to your head after years of training in the other direction).
Finally, Spiridon Louis, a Greek shepherd, soldier, and postal messenger, won the first modern Olympic Marathon. Louis was victorious in 2:58:50 (24.7 miles), leading an overwhelmingly dominant Greek team to seven of the top eight positions as they finished in Panathinaiko Stadium in front of 100,000 wildly celebrating countrymen. That must have been something!
R&B :-)
What a great memory and photo for you two to have. The Olympics starting in a week and a half take place in a slightly different structure, Beijing National Stadium, the Bird's Nest (linked picture is large). The aesthetic is different for sure, modern and bold and quite unconventional.
I look forward to your promised observations on the 5121e systems coming to market. The Cherrypal did more than pique my interest. I started the Wikipedia page for it. Perhaps you could compare its outlook to AMD's PIC experience.
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