MAX IV building site to become marathon arena for a day

01 November 2012

On Sunday, 4 November, a collaboration of a more unusual (and muddy!) kind will take place in the shape of the “MAX IV 2,195” relay race. Teams from the MAX IV Laboratory and the building contractor Fastighets AB ML4 will be taking on the challenge of running at least a marathon.

The track extends around the building site in Lund, Sweden, which will be closed for the day.
A total of six teams and around 70 employees and project workers from the two organisations will take part. The idea is that the distance run by each participant will count towards the total, with the aim of running at least a full marathon. The challenge is not unlike the MAX IV project, which is dependent on the efforts of various organisations and many individuals to achieve its goal. Since so many people have registered to take part, the teams will run not just one, but three marathons, if all the participants complete their distances.

Family and friends of the competitors will be there to cheer on the teams and to see up close how the new MAX IV facility is beginning to take shape.

Today, around 140 people work at the MAX IV Laboratory and some 900 researchers come to use the facility each year. The new facility at Brunnshög in Lund will be completed in 2015 and will be home to the world’s foremost synchrotron radiation source. Once it is completed, it will be able to receive 2 000 users from Sweden and the rest of the world to carry out research experiments in fields including medicine, materials science and environmental science.

Almost 300 people are working intensively on the building site, of whom 130 are builders and 50 fitters. So far, 30 000 cubic metres of concrete have been cast of the total 50 000 cubic metres needed for the project. Half of the foundation for the large experiment hall has been cast and the aim is for the entire foundation and all the stabilisation to be completed before the winter.

The very first surfaces in the part of the facility known as the linear accelerator tunnel are also complete. During the spring, the MAX IV Laboratory will start to install the linear accelerator in this part of the facility.

The circuit around which the teams will compete runs around the building site and through the transport tunnel, which will later link the courtyard inside the large ring with the outside world. It will no longer be possible to run along this stretch once the walls to the courtyard have been erected.

For questions regarding the event, please contact Anna Johansson: anna.johansson@rektor.lu.se or +46 709 525251.