There has been a rather spirited discussion on the FastRunningBlog message boards recently, debating which downhill Utah race course is faster: the new Utah Valley Marathon route, or the St George Marathon route. I am of the opinion that nothing can touch St George. Its downhill simply special, and you can flat-out roll on that course, especially the second half. I don’t think any other course will ever touch it in terms of speed. Nothing personal against Utah Valley, or any other race, but facts are facts.

Other people, of course, disagreed with me (most notably the Utah Valley race director). They argued that the Utah Valley course has a better distribution of downhill. Although the drop is not as great, there is no Vejo hill and no Dammeron Valley hill, and the downhill is more even and mellow at UVM, thus granting less quad bashing and better times. Fair enough.

Still others pointed out the higher elevation of UVM in comparison to St George. The uphills at UVM would have a larger detriment than to those at St George. Fair enough.

After the UVM race concluded (June 12, 2010), the debate really didn’t resolve. Most people conceded that UVM might be just a little slower than St George, maybe a minute or two. I still held the opinion that it was 6-8 minutes slower, which brought on sharp disagreement. As with most running-related arguments (okay, all arguments), little progress was made over time.

This was all in good fun. I actually don’t care if I’m right or wrong, but it’s fun to talk about and fun to debate. Sorry if anyone took it personally. After all, being the fastest race doesn’t imply that it’s the best. But this whole discussion gave me enough motivation to update my Utah Marathon Comparison profile. I originally made this back in fall of 2007, right before the St George race. The chart compared the elevation profiles between 3 classic Utah marathons: Top of Utah, Ogden, and St George.  I found it interesting to look at, and it has actually helped me in race preparation. Other people have told me the same. I’ve been meaning to add other races to it, especially since more and more local marathons keep popping up.

So yesterday I finally digitized the Utah Valley course, extracted elevations, and added the profile. I made sure to zoom in very tightly to make sure I got the route exact on the road and not up on a cliff or anything (an issue with canyon races). I then pulled elevations at a 0.25-mile interval, and used a 5-meter elevation model as the data source. Most states do not have 5m models available, but we are very lucky to have them here in Utah for most of the state. This is a high enough resolution to avoid most errors due to canyon walls, plus Provo Canyon is relatively wide compared to other marathon routes (ie - Top of Utah). So the elevations should be pretty good for UVM, much better than anything you’d get off of Gmap, MapMyRun, or any other USGS-based elevation web service. I also did an extraction at 0.1-mile intervals, which gives a bit higher resolution, but I ended up settling on 0.25-mile intervals in order to match the other three profiles that I made back in 2007. Using 0.25-mile instead of 0.1 would potentially “chop” some of the hills and valleys, which actually leads to a more conservative, smoothed-out profile. But when comparing uphills between these races, perhaps conservative is good.

I also need to mention that digital elevation models are generally bare earth, meaning that things like highway overpasses do not show up in the model. After all, there is ground under the overpass, and that is what is included in the model. Road cuts, however, do show up in the model, and the road cut is obvious in Provo Canyon. Long story short, the infamous “overpass hill” during the last mile of UVM does not show up in the profile, which eliminates an entire hill. I could have fudged it in, but I left it out in order to pad UVM’s numbers against St George a little bit, and also to send a hint to get rid of that hill in real life.

Okay, enough technical gibber-jabber. The result is shown below. Click on the image for a higher-res PDF file. It’s easy to see that Utah Valley is indeed the highest elevation of all the marathons. It also has the most cumulative uphill (slightly more than St G). Again, these are conservative numbers. It has the second-highest total downhill and net downhill out of all the marathons. There are no hills as big as Vejo or as long as Dammeron at UVM, but its hills are still substantial in a few spots. Interestingly, if you compare the average finish times between all of the races on MarathonGuide.com, Utah Valley comes out as second fastest, behind St George.

The Utah Valley event is a great race, and there’s no doubt it’s a fast course. But how fast is hard to determine, and no amount of “stats” or elevation comparisons,  or time cross-references, or anecdotes can really quantify it. There are a lot of variables that go into course speed, and on top of that, every individual runner is different, and will respond differently to each course. My strength may be someone else’s weakness, and vice versa. So again, this is all in good fun.

Anyway, enjoy the new profile chart. They are fun to make, and I certainly find them useful. At some point I’ll add the Salt Lake City Marathon and Des News as well, but I think I’ve got the four biggest marathons on there for now.

Recently I had the pleasure of creating the event maps for the Cellcom Green Bay Marathon. This event, held in mid-May, consists of a marathon, half marathon, “mini” marathon (2.62 miles), and a marathon relay. The course is flat and fast, and good prize money brings in good competition year after year. Another distinctive about the race is that it starts and ends at Lambeau Field, and being a rabid Packer fan, I think that’s about the coolest race venue ever.

For this event, I created separate maps for the marathon, half marathon, and “mini” marathon, and also an “event-wide” map that shows all of the routes on one page. I included the marathon relay on the marathon map.  One of the challenges of mapping an urban marathon is getting the street annotation to be complete, and look good at the same time. For this task, I used the Maplex labeling engine, an ArcGIS extension. Maplex worked wonderfully for my first pass on the street labels, and although I still had to do my fair share of manual labeling and tweaking, Maplex definitely helped create a higher-quality product.

I’d love to run this race one of these years. If I can’t get a Trials Qualifier time at Chicago this fall, I’ll likely take another stab in Green Bay next May. Based on the elevation profile, the course should be a flier.

It’s been awhile seen I’ve posted a new map, although the reason is for lack of time rather than lack of material (a good thing!). But I’m trying to get back into blogging on a regular basis. For new visitors to the site, I periodically like to showcase some of the latest products created by my race course mapping business, Marathon GIS.

This week’s featured map is from the Smoky Mountain Relay (SMR), a 205-mile overnight relay course in North Carolina in early May. Like its name suggests, the course undulates through the peaks and valleys of the Smoky Mountains as it weaves its way from North Mills River to Bryson City.

From my mapping, the course looks to be both beautiful and challenging. It has much more dirt road and trail than your average overnight relay, and the route will take runners to a lot of wild places. It’s the opposite of “urban”.

And quantitatively, the Smoky Mountain route may have a higher difficulty factor than any other relay course I’ve mapped. Looking purely at cumulative elevation gain (gross uphill), the SMR route tallies 26,700 feet! To compare, Ragnar Wasatch Back (Utah) features 14,562 feet of gain, the Wild West Relay (Colorado) boasts 16,459 feet, and the Red Rock Relay (Utah) offers 12,918 feet of gain (although RRR’s 18,275 feet of gross elevation drop can be pretty tough on runners).”Challenging” might be one word to describe the SMR, others might prefer “Himalayan“.

What I love about overnight relays is that they are all unique and each one offers just a little something different to its participants. Some relays are flat, some are hilly (or mountainous). Some offer beautiful vistas of canyons, some the shade of forests or a cool breeze off the ocean. Some are close to home, others are in remote locations.

The SMR course has a lot to offer relay enthusiasts, particularly those that thrive on adventure, have a distrust of pavement, and enjoy challenging terrain. Those that participate in the SMR will finish the race with stories to tell and good bragging rights. I can tell you that the maps have been a lot of fun to make (still in the process of making to the leg maps, actually), and I love doing maps for remote, hilly courses like this one. In terms of cartography, the terrain just leaps off the page, and I try to highlight the natural beauty and ruggedness of the course on the maps. There are not many roads to label on the maps, but I let the terrain and the landscape speak for itself.

Recently I had the opportunity to create a course map and elevation profile for the Canylonlands Half Marathon. This is one of my favorite races, and I’ve participated in either the half marathon or the 5-mile event for five of the last seven years. My familiarity with the courses would definitely be helpful in creating accurate maps, but I also felt particularly obligated to present the striking beauty of the course through cartography.

Fortunately, the state of Utah has the best GIS data clearinghouse I’ve ever used: the Utah Automated Geographic Reference Center (AGRC) and associated GIS Data Portal. From this website, users are able to download many datasets, include 2007 1-ft color aerial imagery and 5-meter digital elevation models…for most of the entire state…for free. Finding data at that resolution, currentness, and cost is truly amazing, and for that reason I love the AGRC and love making maps for locations in Utah.

The 1-ft color imagery allowed me to zoom into the route very tightly (about 1:1000), and precisely digitize every tangent of the route and closely simulate its certification. This helps makes the elevation profile and the mile markers more accurate.

But the 5m elevation model was the real gem. For most of the United States, the best you can get is 10m resolution. In some places you can get no better than 30m. So to get 5m resolution for a tiny town in the middle of Utah is remarkable. I should note that 2m DEM’s are publicly available for some locations in Utah.

What a 5m DEM provides is better hillshading, which is the backbone of this particular map. Every ridge, canyon, drainage, and other topography are sharply defined, even at large scales. This not only makes the map more vivid, but allows it to be blown up to larger scales (and larger prints), and still look wicked good. In addition, the extra resolution of the 5m DEM accommodates better profiling, especially in narrow canyon areas. For much of the Canyonlands race, runners are tucked right up against a huge sandstone cliff. This can really mess with an elevation model, which tends to interpolate/average elevation values in steep areas. With a higher-resolution DEM, this effect is lessened.

The final maps turned out well, in part to the quality of the underlying data. I ended up making an overall map, an elevation profile, and zoom-in views of the start line and finish line. The race management also printed a poster version of the map, which is available for purchase here.

Canyonland Half Marathon poster

Map showing zoom-in view of finish line

I’ve gotten away from showcasing race course maps on this blog, so I figure it’s time to get back to my roots (the blog is named “Marathons and Maps” for a reason).

Recently I finished up a mapping project for a new race called the Palm 100, which is a 100-mile, 6-runner team relay race that hugs the Florida Atlantic coast from Fort Lauderdale to West Palm Beach and back. This race, which is on March 28th, is different than many of the other relays that I’ve mapped, in that it is not overnight, and there are no fixed exchanges.

This yields tremendous flexibility. Teams will decide the the length of each leg and location of relay hand-offs, as long as good discretion is used for the sake of safety and the rule book is followed. This is a new and novel idea to me, and as an experienced relay runner, I like the concept.

From a mapping standpoint, the Palm 100 is unique in that the route had to be exactly 100 miles. The precise distance is very important in certified 5K’s, 10K’s, half marathons, and marathons, but is usually not a concern for long-distance relays. In other words, it usually doesn’t matter if the race is 185.7 miles or 185.6 miles or 192 miles or … you get the picture.

I had to refine my mapping in order the pin the Palm at 100.0 miles. Much of the race is on sidewalks and paved trails, and I was able to use high-resolution aerial photography to zoom in very tightly (up to a scale of 1:900) and digitize the route right on those walkways. With my mouse, I attempted to take every tangent and turn every corner just a runner on the ground would. The end result was the most precise relay course I’ve captured to this point. I have no doubt that it is as close to 100.0 miles as you can get with an on-screen capture method.

In honor of the upcoming Top of Utah Marathon this weekend, today’s topic is about the other race in the event: the Top of Utah 5K. This race is especially of interest to me this year, as I am running it. TOU will be my first 5K since July of 2007, so compound that with my rather “interesting” training this year, I’m not quite certain how I will do.

Fortunately, I do know a few things about the race:

1. It is certified, so I can expect it to be the correct distance
2. It is a relatively flat loop course, so I can expect decent times that actually mean something (ie - not downhill).
3. As part of my sponsorship of the Top of Utah Marathon, I’ve created a course map, so it will be one of the few 5K races out there that actually has a decent map that show the exact turns and the elevation profile.

Most of the maps I make are for relays, marathons, and half marathons; very few short races have the budget or real incentive for maps. However, there is one really nice thing about making a 5K map: scale. What is scale? Think of it as “zoom-factor”. Large-scale means “zoomed in”, small-scale means “zoomed out”. Scale can be represented by ratios, such as 1:6000 (large scale) or 1:100,000 (small scale). Since a 5K loop route does not take up much geographic space relative to a marathon or relay, I have the luxury of creating a large-scale map on a small page size (8.5×11″). This means that I get to show tremendous detail, including aerial photos and crisp turn locations. You just don’t get that on most small-scale maps.

From the elevation profile, it’s easy to see that the elevation does not change much during the race. There is a short, abrupt hill around Mile 1.6 (200 S to 100 S), and very subtle uphill on 300 N, and then a short, abrupt downhill near the finish. The last block (0.1 miles) is on an uphill, but who’s counting at that point?

But all this is getting nit-picky; the course can be more concisely described as relatively flat and fast. Although I am still building my base, I hope to at least challenge 16:00 for a finish time. Seeing 15:5x at the end would be great, but I could live with 16:1x as well. It’s hard to find concrete expectations. I do know that the first half should be faster than the second half of the race, due to topography, so I hope to hit 4:5x on the first mile, 5:0x on the second mile, and then see what I have for the end.

Should be fun! (and way easier than the Top of Utah Marathon).

Many people think that GPS is always used to map routes, but this is far from the truth. When I create race course maps, I almost always capture the course remotely using high-resolution aerial photography. Rather than engaging in time-consuming and costly travel and GPS capture, I can sit in the comfort of my office and on-screen digitize the route very accurately and precisely. I don’t have to worry about satellite connection, tree cover, and topographic obstructions. In the end, it saves the client money and creates a quality product that can be trusted.

But the cool thing about digitizing data in a GIS is that you can later convert the data to a GPS-ready format, and load it into your GPS unit for easy GIS-based navigation. For my mapping, I tend to store and edit my data in either shapefile (.shp), MS Access geodatabase (.mdb), or an ESRI file geodatabase (.gdb). While these are good formats for GIS consumption, they do not help GPS users, but I can export to a more universal, “friendly” format, such as Keyhole Markup Language (.kml), which is similar to XML. Many software programs can read and convert KML files, and it can be used to make data GPS-ready.

Most people’s GPS units can accept GPX format, which is also similar to XML. Thus, to get my GIS data into a GPS, export to GPX would be optimal. However, no GIS software that I’ve seen (yet) converts directly to GPX. But most GIS software can import and export KML, and KML is easy to convert to GPX. So the general process is:

1. Convert your GIS format to .kml format. I use Manifold Systems to do this, but there are several free plugins for ArcGIS that can do this as well. Just search Arcscripts for “kml”.
2. Convert the KML to GPX. There are several programs that can do this. I personally use GPS Babel for all GPS conversion tasks, and Babel handles KML to GPX (and vice-versa) very well. Also, I do know that Garmin Trackmaker Free works for this, but I have not actually used it myself.
3. Load the GPX into your GPS unit. Every GPS software will be a little bit different, but people have had a lot of success loading the files I’ve given them with Garmin Mapsource, so I know it at least works with that. But GPX is a pretty generic file type, and I expect compatibility to be pretty good.

Many participants have been contacting me and requesting the Ragnar Relay Del Sol route. The race is coming up in a few weeks (Feb 29-Mar 1), and they want to import the course route and exchanges into their GPS units to help them prepare for the race, navigate the van, know exactly where the exchanges are, and avoid getting lost during this 24-hour, 190-mile race in the desert.

Due to popular demand, I’ve decided to just post my GPX files here. Over the next few months, I intend to post and make public the GPX files for all seven Ragnar relays.

• Download Relay Del Sol KML files (for Google Earth)
• Download Relay Del Sol GPX files (for GPS)

On February 12th Ragnar Relay announced the addition of three new races to their ever-growing armada of overnight relays. These races will take place this year in Washington D.C. (Sept. 26-27), Austin, TX (Oct. 24-25), and Daytona Beach, FL (Nov. 14-15), joining their existing races in Utah, Arizona, Washington, and Wisconsin/Minnesota.

As with Ragnar’s other races, I have the pleasure of making the course maps for the new relays. From the mapping standpoint, it appears that once again Ragnar has devised three more fantastic routes that will showcase the best of the areas they go through.

I was particularly impressed with the Maryland-Washington D.C. route, about half of which consists of the C&O Trail along the Potomac River. It’s looks truly beautiful, and you can’t beat running on a designated footpath. No traffic=good running.

Cumberland, Maryland to Washington D.C. (September 26-27, 2008)

San Antonio to Austin, Texas (October 24-25, 2008)

Tampa to Daytona Beach, Florida (Nov. 14-15, 2008)

(All course maps by Marathon GIS)

Earlier this week the USATF published the complete set of splits for every runner for the 2008 Olympic Marathon Trials. Ordinarily splits would not be a big deal, and in fact they’ve had 5K splits available for quite some time now. What makes these splits unique is that there are 50 of them!! Due to the fact there was a timing mat every 5K (plus the finish line and half marathon mark), and that the marathon route was a 5-lap course, the 5K split mats picked up splits for all the other times each runner passed over them. Pretty nifty.

Being numbers geek, I naturally plunked all of my own split information into a spreadsheet and went to work. And being a map nerd, I naturally plunked in the elevation profile as well to see how the hills influence my splits.

The above chart shows a lot of what I already knew: I slowed down during the race. Duh. But due to the better resolution of the splits, I could see exactly where and by how much. It looks like someone flipped a switch in me right after 15 miles that said, “You run slow now!” Splits dropped abruptly from sub-5:20 to 5:30+. The good news is that I had nothing slower than 5:53-pace. There was a 5:48 in there, but then pretty much everything else was all faster than 5:40-pace. This is all helpful to me, since I did not wear a watch during the race.

I thought an interesting overlay would be to add the elevation profile, my previous split pace, and my overall pace to a graph. This would answer the question: how much did the uphills slow me down (and uphills speed me up) throughout the race?

My elevation profile isn’t quite calibrated with the USATF certification, so it is a little shifted in places. Plus, the pace graph is shifted a little forward, since it is the pace of the previous split. BUT, the relation between the two major hills of the course with my pace is quite obvious, and kind of cool to look at. You can see the same pace pattern for the last four laps of the race (the first lap we were all steadily accelerating due to the slow start).

From the graph, I can see that early in the race I was running 5:00-5:05 on the downhills and 5:20-5:25 on the uphills. Late in the race, I was managing ~5:15 on the bigger downhills, but 5:40-5:50 on the uphills. From training in Utah, I am a pretty good downhill runner, so it doesn’t surprise me that I could hold it together better on the downs, even late in the race. That is a result of training specifically for St. George, and I did notice during the race that I passed or made up ground on quite on few runners during the downhill sections.

Although I didn’t hit a real Wall during Trials, it is obvious that fatigue worked its way into my legs after Mile 15 or so, and the repetitious hills worked me over as the race progressed. Clearly, I have work to do on my strength and endurance.

But that’s it for thinking about Trials! It was a blast to run, but it is past, and now it is time to look forward to the future: more training and more big races!

As a geographer and a runner, one of my pre-race rituals is to make my own map and profile for the course I am about to run. For me, making maps is enjoyable, soothing even, and it really helps me get a bearing on a course and form a strategy. Just as in school, where you learn more by writing down notes yourself, I learn more about the course by making by own map rather than just looking at the map supplied by the race website.

One of the course aspects strongly emphasized by all the mapping I do as Marathon GIS is elevation change. Creating a strong false-color elevation model as the backdrop of a route will show the location and magnitude of all hills, ridges, peaks, and valleys with a quick glance. And hills are probably the most important component of the 2008 Olympic Marathon Trials race, which will be held in New York City on November 3, 2007.

The marathon trials course starts by looping through Times Square, and then circumvents the interior of Central Park 5 times. I have never been to New York City (a sure disadvantage for me), but word on the streets is that the Central Park loops are very hilly, and the constant barrage of rolling undulations will strongly influence the race, favoring runners with strength and the ability to accelerate on uphills. The existing course maps are very well-done, but do not show an elevation profile or indication of where the hills are.  I decided to put some work in to see for myself what I am up against, and compiled the course map shown below:

Judging by the false-color elevation (green = low, red = high), it is evident that the Central Park course is indeed quite hilly! How hilly? That can be quantified through the Elevation Profile, shown under the map. According to my elevation measurements, there is just under 2000 feet of total (cumulative) elevation gain and loss! However, the total relief of the course is only 80 feet. This means that none of the hills are particularly large…but there are lots of them! And since it is a 5-lap course, we will run the same battery of hills over and over…and over and over.

The map itself is 24″x36″, and its purpose it to plot out and hang on a wall. It is an ideal size for presentation at an expo or information meeting. The entire map was composed in ArcMap 9.2, and the final layout was done in InDesign CS2. Since this was a relatively “rough and dirty” map, I did not use Illustrator at any point.

The false-color elevation model is derived from a 10-meter digital elevation model (DEM), as are the elevation profile chart and statistics. The underlying aerial photography, which nicely shows all of the buildings of the city and trees of Central Park, is 1-meter NAIP. Water features are highlighted by using multiple-ring buffers and gradient fills. Something new I tried on this map was a cartographic trick presented by the ESRI Mapping Center Blog for creating “expressive” directional arrows as polygon features rather than simple line graphics. The arrows turned out nicely, and will be a technique that I will continue to use on future maps.

I did use Illustrator (CS2) for the elevation profile graphic, but in a new way. Rather than creating the raw profile in Microsoft Excel and then pasting into Illustrator, I experimented with creating the raw profile directly in ArcMap, using the improved graphing tools of v.9.2. I then exported the profile to a .jpg image, placed the .jpg into Illustrator, and tweaked the Live Trace feature until I got a satisfactory result. I then cleaned up and modified the profile artwork, added some effects, and dumped it into the InDesign layout. Quick, but effective. It is definitely a fresh look from my previous profiles, and I am pleased with it in that it does not look like it came straight out of Excel.

So enough of the nerdy technical details. It is unfortunate that I will not be able to tour the course until November 1, only two days before the race. Nothing beats gaining familiarity by actually running and racing on a course, but I hope to use this map and profile to at least get a sense of what I am in for. I will post my thoughts on how the course will actually impact my race and my strategy later this week, as well as my other miscellaneous thoughts on the trials race.

Part of the fun of being a marathoner is picking out your races each year. Another aspect of marathoning that is both fun and important is designing your strategy once you have registered for the race. Personally, I use elevation profiles to help me with both tasks.

An accurate elevation profile will show runners the nuances of gradient throughout a given course layout. Within 5 seconds, a viewer can answer the questions:

• Is the course hilly or flat? Is this course fast or slow?
• Does it give me a good challenge or is it too hilly?
• Can I achieve my goals on this course?
• How should I race this course?
• How should I train for this course?

When I create elevation profiles in support of my race course mapping, I aim to make them as clear and non-misleading as possible. After all, the profile can be one of the major factors that influences a runner to run the race. Every race has its own “personality” that should match up with the strengths and preferences of individual runners. Personally, I like downhill courses, but if the profile shows too steep of a downhill, I will not run it out of fear of injuries and diminishing returns on my finish time.

Three marathon courses in my fine state of Utah that offer fast, downhill layouts are the Ogden Marathon (May), Top of Utah Marathon (September), and the St. George Marathon (October). I have raced Ogden twice, Top of Utah four times, and St. George once, and they are all good P.R. courses — provided that you have trained for downhill!! If you have not engaged in a lot of downhill training, all three courses will eat you alive. I love these three races, though, and highly recommended them, especially St. George.

Since Top of Utah and St. George are both coming up within the next month, I decided to create a graphic that compares the profiles of the above three races.

Looking at the comparison, it is very clear that St. George should by far be the fastest course. Not only does it have the greatest elevation loss, but it is also at the lowest average elevation above sea level. Interestingly, St. George has the greatest elevation gain as well, as neither Ogden nor TOU have any hills even approaching the Vejo hill along Mile 8. The 400′ of total climbing at St. George is certainly nothing to sneeze at, and it really forces runners to train for both ups and downs.

However, it is NOT clear from this elevation comparison which is the faster course between Top of Utah and Ogden. Based on the total statistics and the profile line itself, it appears to be a complete wash. They both have virtually the same gain and loss, but are distributed differently. Personally, I like Ogden better, because much of the downhill is during the last 8 miles, whereas Top of Utah is rolling to flat during the last 8 miles. For me, this at least makes Ogden mentally easier. However, the top times at TOU tend to be faster than those at Ogden year after year. And if you poll 100 Utahns, most will tell you that TOU is faster. But when I look at the course profiles and evaluate my own experiences, I think they are almost identical in speed.

I wonder if TOU’s faster times are a result of simply being a fall race, whereas Ogden is a spring race? Training during Utah’s winters is often harsh, and perhaps most people do not get into peak shape until autumn. I think this could easily cause a “time bias” in favor of Top of Utah.

What do you think?

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One final note of interest: The first 3.5 miles of all three races have identical elevation drops and gradients. Beyond being a cool coincidence, this fact is also useful in that you can uses your experience(s) in the other races to determine how fast to begin a race you have not run yet, or not run recently. First example, I ran 5:28/mile for the first four miles of the Ogden Marathon last May. Using estimates of fitness gains since May, and the fact of analogous gradients between courses for miles 0-4, I have determined that I should run the first four miles at St. George at 5:20/mile pace.

It’s been awhile since I’ve showcased a race course map, but the approach of autumn means lots of great fall races! My most recently completed project is the Fall 50, a 5-person, 50-mile relay that takes place on the beautiful Wisconsin shorelines of the Door County Peninsula on October 20th. The race can also be run as an ultra event.

Just from mapping the course on aerial photography, I could tell that the race is very beautiful, and wanted to showcase that by creating beautiful maps that make people think of fall colors. Do do this, I created a color ramp for the false-color elevation that consisted mostly of yellows, oranges, and reds. Another key feature of the maps is the ample shoreline, which I portrayed using the technique of coastal vignettes (multiple-ring buffers). The final touch was using the race’s maple leaf logo as the exchange symbol, which I did by vectorizing the logo in Adobe Illustrator and then exporting as an .emf, which can be imported into ArcMap as picture symbol.

In all, I was pleased with the outcome, and enjoyed creating maps to fit the unique “personality” of the course.

Due to the facts that it’s two days before the Ogden Marathon and that I’m rather bored right now, it seems appropriate to post a map, profile, and discussion of the upcoming race. Only this time I’m going retro: rather than creating a nice, new, shiny map and profile, I’m electing to post some of the earliest work I’ve done.

I made the map below back in winter of 2004 for “personal use”, and then modified it when Ogden changed their course in 2005. My race course mapping business, Marathon GIS, was just an idea that point, and the sole purpose of this map was to make something more informative for myself than what was on the website at the time. The map was created using Manifold Systems v6.0. No Adobe Illustrator, no Photoshop, no ArcGIS, just 100% Manifold. The map looks very crude to me now (embarassing even), but at the time I thought it was pretty cool. Fortunately, my hardware, software, and cartography/graphic arts skills have increased quite a bit over the past three years.

Likewise, the profile I made for the Ogden Marathon was not “prettied up” in Illustrator, but was a 100% product of Manifold + Microsoft Excel. However, even this crude profile effectively shows the layout of the race course and its unique characteristics.

The couse can be broken out into any number of distinct segments, depending on whether you are a “lumper” or a “splitter”. Today, I’m feeling more like a splitter, so I’m dividing it into 5 topographic segments.

1. Mile 0 to Mile 8.25 - South Fork. Virtually all downhill, at a nice, mellow average gradient of -1.16%. The race gets off to a fast start on this segment, especially since weather is always nice and cool early in the morning up the canyon. Resist the tempatation to get out too fast. Instead stay comfortable, enjoy the downhill, and preserve your glycogen.
2. Mile 8.25 to Mile 14.5 - Pineview Part 1. Regretfully, the downhill dissipates into rolling hills as the course starts to circumnavigate Pineview Reservoir in Ogden Valley. Most of the hills are not steep or long, with the exception of a sharp climb around Mile 14. Quite enough to slow you down though. The key here is to stay relaxed, get the most out of aid stations, and recover whenever you get a downhill. Average gradient for the segment is +0.21%.
3. Mile 14.5 to Mile 17.25 - Pineview Part 2. After the large hill around Mile 14, the course flattens out again, and you even get a slight downhill for awhile. This is a good portion of the race to recover from the rollers and get your rhythm again. It’s the “calm before the storm” (-0.25% average gradient), as the next segment will be a downhill quad-burner.
4. Mile 17.25 to Mile 24 - Ogden Canyon. Downhill quad-burner, with St. George-like gradients in places. You know you are in for a ride when you look down from the top of Pineview Reservoir dam. Pretend you are a drop of water and let gravity flow you into Ogden. This segment is where most people find out how well-trained they are, but it is a good opportunity to fly. Around Mile 23, Ogden Canyon burps out the runners into the valley, and resumes a more gentle downhill along the Ogden River Parkway. Average gradient for the entire segment is -1.8%.
5. Mile 24 to Mile 26.2 - Ogden City. With glycogen depleted, quads mashed into a pulp, and running in more “gravity-neutral” conditions, many runners struggle to hang on to the finish. Plus the heat kicks during this part of the race. Mile 25 is still a very slight downhill, and then the remainder of the course to the finish is essentially flat. Thankfully, no uphill finish in this race. Average gradient for this segment is -0.16%. Be resilient, douse yourself with water at aid stations, and finish strong!

The Ogden Marathon has potential to be a fast course, but has to be run “just right”. If you run a poor strategy, or are not trained for hills, the course can turn into a big hurt. I negative-split this course by about 20 seconds back in 2005, and still believe that an even or slightly negative split is the best way to approach Ogden. This means being conservative during the first 8 downhill miles, and then maintaining effort around Pineview. If your legs aren’t trashed by Mile 17, you can throw down some serious splits through Ogden Canyon, which is where you can get back all of the time lost in Ogden Valley, and then some.

It should be great field at Ogden this year, not just upfront, but deep into the ranks as well. This will be my 10th marathon, and marks my first marathon back from injury, so it will be especially meaningful to me. Good luck everyone!!

This week’s featured maps are for the Wild Miles Relay. This overnight adventure relay race is put on by In Motion, Inc., and travels 179 miles from Vail Lake in Temecula, CA to its finish aat San Dieguito County Park in Del Mar, CA. True to its namesake, the Wild Miles Relay travels through some difficult terrain, and takes its 5- to 10-person teams through everything from deserts, to mountains, to the Pacific coast.

Marathon GIS produced two primary map products for this race:

1) A map book featuring the leg map, route directions/mileage, gps coordinates, misc leg information, and the elevation profile.

2) A large overview map (22”x36”) that shows the entire course and the entire profile in an aesthetic layout. These overview maps are good for both planning race logistics and as a souvenir.

My goal with the Wild Miles project was not just to create accurate maps and profiles, but also to “bring the race to life” by incorporating custom elements into the maps. The race’s official fonts were used for exchange and street labeling within the maps, and were also used in the profiles and in the map titles. A false-elevation color ramp was selected that uses warm colors in the desert/mountainous part of the race, and cool colors in the low-elevation coastal part of the race. Multiple-ring buffers were used to create “coastal vignettes”, which enhance the aesthetics of water bodies within the maps. The majority of the cartography was performed in ArcGIS 9.2, Adobe Illustrator CS2 was used to create the profiles, and Adobe InDesign CS2 for the final map and atlas layouts.

Good luck to all those participating in the Wild Miles Relay this weekend!

One of the products I offer as Marathon GIS is a custom souvenir map for race courses. These maps are fun to make, but also provide race participants a unique memento of their running endeavor or adventure. I tend to either sell them myself as an on-site vendor, or sell the reproduction rights to the race director and turn over sales and profits to the race itself. Several race directors have taken me up on this and generated additional revenue through map sales. It’s win-win.

I have found that souvenir maps for relay courses sell particularly well. After 24 hours and 200 miles of running, it’s a great commemorative souvenir to show everyone where race went and how much elevation gain and loss there was. My latest set of souvenir maps are for the upcoming Relay del Sol (March 30-31).

The Del Sol course starts in Wickenburg, and then traverses around to the north and the east of the Phoenix metro area. It then finishes in Scottsdale. This 36-leg relay is 187 miles long, and features some outstanding desert running.

I am selling two different souvenir maps for this race:

1. A smaller, 11″x17″ map printed on a glossy cover stock.
2. A larger 24″x36″ wall map printed on coated paper.

The main difference between the two besides size is that the larger map has a transparent aerial photo overlay, which looks pretty cool. The scale of the 11×17 map is too small for this.

Both base maps were created in ArcMap 9.2 and then exported to PDF. I then opened up the PDF in Adobe Illustrator CS2 and added some finishing cartographic touches, such as labeling exchanges with specialized fonts, adding the Ragnar Relay logo as a transparent layer underneath the GIS layers (roads, course route, labeling, etc.), and adding a subtle drop shadow to the course route itself to give it some depth and emphasis. I was pleased with the final look of these effects.

The profile was created by pasting over an Excel graph to Illustrator, and then letting the Illustrator tools make it look pretty. I added some blues to this profile to “cool down” the map a little and invoke thoughts of blue sky in the desert.

Photoshop was also used for a few tasks, most notably clipping out the white background that resulted from exporting the Arizona overview map from ArcMap. The final layout was assembled in Adobe InDesign, which is a really great tool for tasks like this.

In all, the maps were a good project to show (and learn) how ArcMap, Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign can work together in tandem to create a final cartographic product superior to that of using any of these programs alone.

The 11×17 map will be sold for $8 and the 24×36 wall map will be sold for $15. See my Marathon GIS Store for details.

Okay, so I didn’t have time to make my own maps for the Ogden WRC 10-mile race this weekend, but I did the next best thing: cheated and hijacked someone else’s map. The victim of this crime was the Google Map of the course from the USATF Running Routes site. The accessories were the GMapToGPX bookmarklet and a handy piece of freeware called GPS Babel. The beneficiaries are Google Earth, NASA Worldwind, ArcGIS Explorer, and of course, us.

The process was this:

1. Go to the GMapToGPX website, read the directions, and drag the highlighted link into your bookmarks (I’m using Firefox). This “installs” the bookmarklet, and it’s now available for all future use.
2. Go to the Google Map of the 10-mile course via the Striders website.
3. Once the map is displayed, execute the GMapToGPX bookmarklet just as you would any other web bookmark. A new box pops up with the GPX code.
4. Copy and paste the GPX code into any text editor. I use NotePad. Save the document as a .txt file.
5. Go into Windows Explorer (or whatever equivalent you Linux, Unix, or Mac folks use), and rename the file suffix from “.txt” to “.gpx”. It is now officially a GPX file!
6. Now the fun starts. Download and unzip the GPS Babel software. Execute the GPSBabelGUI file.
7. Select the GPX file you just made as the “Input” (GPX XML) and create a new KML file as the output (Google Earth (Keyhole) Markup Language). Select “Waypoints” and click “Let’s Go”.
8. You now have a KML file! KML can be imported or read by many free globe programs (Google Earth, Worldwind, etc.), and even by full-fledged GIS software (ArcGIS, Manifold, etc.)!
9. Install Google Earth, WorldWind, or the viewer of you choice and have fun playing with the course route in 3D. Be sure to adjust the vertical exaggeration to really emphasize where the hills are.
10. If you don’t feel like doing this process yourself, click here to download the KML file I generated from Babel.

This may seem like a lot of work, but the whole process takes about one minute once you get everything installed and summit the learning curve. Below are a few screenshots of the 10-mile course in NASA WorldWind, overlain on USGS high-resolution urban imagery. Much more “fun” than the original Google Map from the USATF site! Click for full size.

This is a great toolset for anyone:

1. For non-GIS users, it allows people to quickly grab data from most Google Maps, and bring the route into any number of free 3D applications for more detailed viewing, flythroughs, and qualitative analysis.
2. For GIS nerds, we can use this technique to bring Google Map routes (whether it be running routes, driving directions, or anything else of interest) into most desktop GIS platforms. I personally use Manifold Systems for KML import, and once it is imported, I can export to any number of GIS formats. Once it is in the GIS, I can further manipulate or analyze the data, or simply use it as a backdrop for other data viewing or collection. For my own course maps, most KML files do not offer the degree of precision and accuracy I require, but they are still handy for providing reference for when I manually redigitize a course.

Happy mapping!

Raceday is almost upon us, so time for some maps and pre-race analysis. After looking at the online map for the 10K course, I was not encouraged about the pain-factor of this race. From the email I got from Striders:

“It will be an epic 10K run, we hope you like it.”

Yeah, I bet! The 5K was pretty epic, and even fun, in kind of a sick, twisted sort of way.

Making my own maps did nothing to help these sentiments. One of the benefits of using a GIS-based approach for mapping is that you can overlay multiple layers, which allows for direct visual comparison between two data themes. In this case I overlaid the Striders 5K course from two weeks ago with the 10K course. Doing this allows us to see where the 10K goes relative to the 5K, and also lets us assess how much worse the 10K will be!

Of course, a course map for these particular races would be virtually meaningless without an elevation layer! Overlaying a digital elevation model (DEM) accomodates planimetric visualization of all the climbs and descents…all without a profile graph. This is one reason why I tend to bash Google Map mashups, which we are seeing with increasing frequency as “official” race course maps. Yes, Google Maps and Google Earth are quick and handy, they display roads and aerial photography quite well, and they accomodate some custom data. But even for simple maps they are lacking in several major areas: 1) No elevation layers; 2) Poor cartography; 3) Commercial-use limitations and map ownership limitations. They are referred to as “Google Map hacks” for a reason. I’ll discuss points 2 and 3 in other posts, for today I’m only interested in elevation.

The GIS map posted below is very simple: it only shows the 5K route (red dash), the 10K route (solid yellow), 10K mile and tenth-mile markers, and a shaded elevation map. I did not have time to do any real cartography (ie roads, labeling, etc.), so just a “down and dirty” map for today. I left out aerial photography to focus the eye on the true point of the map: showing elevation, which grades from green (low elevation) to red (high elevation). See the legend for details, but the elevation colors change in 25-ft increments. Click on the map image to download a full .pdf file.

We can see immediately that the 10K course reaches a higher elevation (>5100 ft) than the 5K course from two weeks ago. Yikes! We’ve got a heck of a climb between Mile 2.2 and 3.1, but from there on we’ll have a very fast downhill (aside from a wimpy little climb just after Mile 5.0).

My take on this race is similar to that of the 5K: the race can be lost in the first half, and won in the second half. A relatively conservative start will ensure success and plenty of leg pop for making a mad surge on the downhill section. But if you go into debt in the first half, you may be out of gas by the time the course becomes favorable for speed.

Even though one can glean everything they need to know from the elevation map itself, I’ve sketched up a very quick and dirty profile and stats for those of you who must have one. Note that the 5K profile is overlaid on the 10K profile for direct comparison (another handy feature of custom mapping vs. a web service or Google Map). I calculated roughly 680 ft of total gain and drop for the 10K. This is just slightly more than twice that of the 5K. Gradients are very similar to those that we experienced in the 5K (unfortunately), although some parts will definitely be less brutal on the knees. I didn’t have the time or desire to actually calculate gradients and post them on the profile like last time, but I think the graphic itself says it all (click on image to enlarge profile).

Since the total elevation gain/loss is pretty much twice that of the Striders 5K, I think simply plugging your Striders 5K time into a standard race calculator, such as RunWorks or Sasha’s, and not worrying about calibrating for elevation, will get you pretty close. Based on my 5K time from two weeks ago, my projected 10K time would be 34:27. So that will be my 2nd-tier goal time to beat. If I’ve experienced fitness gains over the last two weeks, and/or just bust off a great race, my 1st-tier goal is sub-34:00. I predict that the winner (assuming the same cast of runners as last time) will be somewhere between 33:40 and 33:55.

In honor of Worldwind v.1.4 being released last week, here’s a teaser for the upcoming Ogden Striders Series 10K race. The 10K race course is shown in yellow; click for bigger picture. More GIS fun to come in a few days…

The MarathonGIS.com map of the week features the new route for the Wasatch Back Relay. The WBR is an exciting 178-mile, 36-leg relay race that traverses the interior of the Wasatch Mountain Range in northern Utah from Logan down to Park City, and is the cornerstone of the Ragnar Relay Series. The 12-person or 6-person teams run continuously through the night, and typical finish times are in the 20 to 24-hr range. Marathon GIS has been a sponsor of the Wasatch Back Relay since 2006, and designs and updates all of their course maps, profiles, leg books, and 3D animations.

2007 will be the 4th year of this young race. The WBR had 22 teams its first year (2004), close to 100 teams the second year, nearly 200 teams last year, and is anticipating registration of well over 200 teams for 2007. Another way to put it: the race is growing! This means that the race volume has grown to big for its britches (ie the course capacity) in some places. Consequently, the WBR route must be changed to accomodate the growth and also improve the race.

Doing any sort of manual editing within a geographic information system (GIS) requires a bit of labor, but the quantity and depth of this labor can be reduced by setting up a good data structure and workflow. Completely revamping half of the race took a solid two workdays of labor, which is a paltry amount compared to the initial mapping and setup time. Since a solid basemap framework and workflow had already been established, updates were streamlined and efficient, accomodating fast turnover time.

Click here to view flash maps of the course changes.

All of the WBR course changes are constrained to the first half of the race. The most obvious changes are the start of the race, and then the legs preceding the second major exchange of the race (Exch 12). Rather than starting at Hardware Ranch and chundering down Blacksmith Fork Canyon, the race now begins in Logan, which offers a much bigger and more accessible venue. Although beautiful, Blacksmith Fork was getting a bit crowded, plus teams hurrying to the start line tended to drive too fast up the canyon, putting runners on the road at risk.

Legs 1 and 2 are brand new, but then 3-10 will be fairly familiar to long-time WBR participants. Exchange spacing has been altered in order to put Exch 6 in Liberty, meaning that Van 1 does Avon Pass, but the actual course orientation is pretty much the same, barring a few minor details. The same goes for Legs 7-10: it’s a very similar route circumnavigating Ogden Valley as did the previous course, but there are a few different turns, and some exchanges are in slightly different locations. Since Exch 6 is now in Liberty, Van 2 no longer needs to travel to Cache Valley, but instead can meet Van 1 in Liberty, a big perk for those coming from the Wasatch Front or from the SLC Airport.

Legs 11-13 are the second major course change. Rather than running the behemoth summit up New Trappers Loop…there is now a behemoth summitt up Snow Basin Rd! Yes, it will be a long nasty climb, but will offer amazing views, reduced traffic hazards, and a sweet Exch 12 spot at Snow Basin. The race outgrew the old Exch 12 in Huntsville, and Snow Basin will provide ample parking and space for a major exchange.

By the middle of Leg 13, the route rejoins the old course for the most part. There are a few different turns, and in general the route favors more rural roads than before, but the general layout is the same. From Leg 18 onward, the course is exactly the same as it was in 2006, without exception.

Van 1 can now breathe a sigh of relief: they no longer have to run Avon Pass and Guardsman Pass (Ragnar)! In addition, the Snow Basin/Trappers pass south of Ogden Valley is now shared by Van 1 and Van 2, further equalizing the workload and the scenic views. Finally, capacity issues have been resolved, allowing this exciting young race to continue its growth and development.

Last night I had a little extra time, so I busted out the Strider Series 5K course map and profile in ArcGIS. For those unfamiliar with Geographic Information Systems (GIS), a GIS will marry together spatial (geographic) information with a database backend that contains attributes for the spatial data (and for linked tabular data). Every feature included in a GIS map will have an associated table, and both spatial and tabular data can be used together (or alone) for subsequent analysis. Most people are familiar with Google Earth, which could be considered a very lightweight GIS program (but that’s stretching it). True GIS software has almost no limitations on what you can extract from the data.

Anyway, ArcGIS 9.2 allows users to made cool little time-series animations of data. What I did for the Ogden 5k was trick the program into thinking that race distance was actually time series, so the YouTube movie below shows an animated course and profile. This is a new ArcGIS feature that I’m pretty excited about and hope to use for future race contract work.

As you can see, the Ogden course is quite hilly, mostly uphill for the first half and then downhill for the second half. But how hilly? GIS allows me to quantify the gradient of the course, by creating elevation points at a fixed spacing (0.1 miles), and then extracting spot elevations from a 10-meter DEM. Most profile web services, such as the one found at the USATF Running Routes page, use 100-meter DEM’s, which are more generalized and less accurate that the 10-meter DEM’s that I download. After I run the analysis, I then import the resultant table into Excel to calculate gain/loss/gradient, and create an elevation profile graph. I’m generally not happy with Excel graphics, so I tend to copy and paste the profile graph into Adobe Illustrator to doll it up. Illustrator can be difficult to use at first, but is the premium tool for graphic arts, as well as cartography. My Illustrator profile is below (click on thumbnail for full resolution).

In a nutshell, the Ogden 5K has 325 feet of cumulative gain and 325 feet of cumulative loss (it’s a loop). Uphill and downhill gradients range between 2%-10%! Yikes! According to my Noakes calculator, this course will be about 30 seconds slower than running on a track. Thus, for those of you hoping to run 16:00, plan on something more like 16:30. As for myself, I’m hoping to end up with 16:45 or so, based on this information. We’ll see how it goes!