Green bananas can’t throw 3.091 Fun Run off course

The night before the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE)'s 3.091 Fun Run, organizer Bianca Sinausky opened a case of bananas she'd ordered and was met with a surprise: the fruit was bright green.

"I looked around for paper bags, but I only found a few," says Sinausky, graduate academic administrator for the department, referring to a common hack for speeding up ripening. "It was hopeless."

That is, until facilities manager Kevin Rogers came up with a plan: swap the green bananas for ripe ones from MIT's Banana Lounge, a free campus snack and study space stocked with fruit.

"It was genius," Sinausky says. "The runners would have their snack, and the race could go on."

DMSE checked in with the Banana Lounge a little late, but logistics lead senior Colin Clark approved anyway. "So that's where that box came from," he says.

On a bright fall morning, ripe bananas awaited 20 DMSE students and faculty in the Oct. 15 run, which started and finished at the Zesiger Sports and Fitness Center and wound along pedestrian paths across the MIT campus. Department head Polina Anikeeva, an avid runner, says the goal was to build community, enjoy the outdoors, and celebrate 3.091 (Introduction to Solid-State Chemistry), a popular first-year class and General Institute Requirement.

"We realized 3.091 was so close to 5 kilometers - 3.1 miles - it was the perfect opportunity," Anikeeva says, admitting she made the initial connection. "I think about things like that."

For many participants, running is a regular hobby-but doing it with colleagues made it even more enjoyable. "I usually run a few times a week, and I thought it would be fun to log some more miles in my training block with the DMSE community," says graduate student Jessica Dong, who is training for the Cambridge Half Marathon this month.

Fellow graduate student Rishabh Kothari agrees. "I was excited to support a department event that aligns with my general hobbies," says Kothari, who recently ran the Chicago Marathon and tied for first in his age category in the DMSE run. "I find running to be a great community-building activity."

While fun runs are usually noncompetitive, organizers still recognized the fastest runners by age group.

Unlike an official road race, organized by a race company - the City of Cambridge currently isn't allowing new races - the DMSE run was managed internally by an informal cohort of colleagues, Sinausky says, which meant a fair amount of work.

"The hardest part was walking the route and putting the mileage out, and also putting out arrows," she says. "When a race company does it, they do it properly."

There were a few minor snags - some runners went the wrong way, and two walkers got lost. "So I think we need to mark the course better," Sinausky says.

Others found charm in the run's rough edges.

"My favorite part of the run was when a group of us got confused about the route, so we cut through the lawn in front of Tang Hall," Dong says. At the finish line, she showed off a red DMSE hat - one of the giveaways laid out alongside ripe bananas and bottles of water.

Looking ahead to what organizers hope will be an annual event, the team is considering purchasing race timing equipment. Modern road races distribute bibs outfitted with RFID chips, which track each runner's start and finish. Sinausky's method - employing a smartphone timer and Anikeeva tracking finish times on a clipboard - was less high-tech, but effective for the small number of participants.

"We would see the runners coming, and Polina would say, 'OK, bib 21.' And then I would yell out the time," she says. "I think that if more people showed up, it would've been harder."

Sinausky hopes to boost participation in coming years. Early interest was strong, with 63 registering, but fewer than a third showed up on race day. The week's delay due to rain - and several straight days of rain since - likely didn't help, she says.

Overall, she says, the run was a success, with participants saying they hope it will become a new DMSE tradition.

"It was great to see everyone finish and enjoy themselves," Kothari says. "A nice morning to be around friends."