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.

There’s been some interesting discussion on the Tinman Forum (The Run Zone) regarding taking days off running. I’ve had some mixed ideas on this over the years, so the topic interests me. In high school, I always took one day off per week. Then in college, I took 1 day off every 21 days. Post-collegiately, I’ve slacked a bit more and taken a day or two off a week. Hmmm…I was slow in high school, then fast in college, and then slowed down post-collegiately…is there a trend here?

Tinman may say so. In his opinion days off are valid only when:

1. You are sick
2. You are injured
3. During planned rest breaks.

But during the real training season, days off act as mental crutch, and you don’t really need it. This mode of thought, by the way, mostly applies to highly competitive, elite, and aspiring-elite runners (ie - nerds). Normal people usually have too much of a life to run every day.

According to Tinman, downfalls to taking days off are:

1. Loss of blood volume
1. Loss of V02Max
2. Loss of efficiency
2. Diminished motor-neural and sensory awareness. You don’t realize you are pushing too hard when you return (all stocked full of glycogen).
3. You think you can push harder when you come back from resting, but this is not a good idea.
4. All this can make people more prone to injury (a paradox)

As Tinman puts it:

“Frequency of running is directly linked to efficiency. If you run more often, you improve your efficiency. You run along using less energy. You extend your stamina. You simply don’t get tired like you used to!”

To put it another way, in order to race faster, you must run more. If you take days off, you will not reach your true potential. It’s a personal choice, but when it comes down to it, it’s that simple!

These, by the way, are the paraphrased words of Tinman, but I think I’m agreeing with most of it. It makes sense to me…how may days off do you think elite runners like Alan Webb, Paul Tergat, or Meb take? (actually that would be an interesting set of stats…)

However, most of us have to take days regularly, whether it be because of religious convictions, unforgiving work schedules, or family committments…all very valid reasons. This is the real world, after all, and there is life beyond running. I should also note that many training programs or phases of programs demand scheduled days off (ie immediately after a marathon, coming back from injury, etc.)

But I’ve become convinced that for those of us who do not have obstacles to running every day…we should! After being on a 6-day/week for several months, I’m now easing back into my 21 days on, 1 day off routine. It’s going pretty well. The key is to make sure your easy days are easy. Now, rather than taking my day off, I’ll just do a lower-volume run (4-8 miles) at a slow pace, and just let my body relax and unwind. Even a 2-mile jog is better than nothing, and will allow the body “active rest”. I am no more tired than before, I’m still injury-free, and training (and racing!) is going quite well. I hope to hit my true potential someday, and this may be one element of that puzzle.

This is obviously a fairly controversial subject among runners. Feel free to disagree with me, just explain why!

Sunglasses and I typically do not play well together. I have purchased — and destroyed — countless pairs of lenses and frames over the years through a gamut of mishaps.

These destructive events were not of malevolent intent, but were rather quite accidental; whether by sitting on them, stepping on them, my dog’s chewing habit, or running them over with the lawnmower (yes, that really happened). Accidents … all of them! Oh, and the sunglasses that I manage to keep in one piece, I tend to lose….

Read the full article at The Final Sprint!

Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” was a powerful and enlightening documentary. While viewing it in the theater last year, I was inspired by the tips that rolled during the ending credits on how to take action and make a positive environmental impact. As the movie’s website phrases it:

“You have the power to make a difference. Small changes to your daily routine can add up to big changes in helping to stop global warming.”

Read the full article at The Final Sprint! 

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!

I don’t know about everyone else, but I’m getting a little tired of racing every other week. For me, the Striders 10-miler this weekend is going to put the “training” back in Training Series. That what this is, right? A training series to get in shape for the Ogden Marathon.

I had a hard time recovering from the 10K, and spent much of the subsequent week trying to recover rather than punishing the pavement with vigorous training. I hope to avoid this trend with the 10-miler. The key is that the race itself needs to be a big threshold workout. This is difficult, because I will have to shut my mind off to its competitive urges early in the race. I think in the second half of the race, it will be good to “practice” racing and open it up a bit, perhaps running the last several miles at full tilt. But 4-5 miles of hard racing is a lot easier to recover from than 10 miles!

Hopefully this will pan out for me. I think that I got “real” racing out of my system with the 5K and 10K. It was great to come back from injury and race hard, but now I’ve gotten over some of the initial excitement of racing, and it’s time to buckle down, train hard, and complete some quality workouts in preparation for a marathon.

My goals for the 10-miler are:

1. Relax and run marathon-pace for the first half or so.
2. Improve my uphill running. Make sure no one runs away from me on ascents.
3. Race hard the last half. Practice race strategy and bury some people through hard surges.
4. Improve my finishing kick. Run a last mile that I can truly be proud of.
5. Average under 6:00/mile overall for the race.

As far as predictions, I think with all the hills, winners will be somewhere in the 57:30 range (5:45/mile). I also think a lot of other people will back off this race and focus on their training too. With this race out of the way, folks will have four solid weeks of quality training before the half marathon. Getting banged up on a difficult 10-miler would waste a week for recovery. That being said, for those willing to hang it all out, this may be a good race to make up ground on the competition, get some good circuit points, and perhaps win some money. As for me, I have to bite my cheek and force myself to think “big picture.”

Oh, and the course map with analysis? No time right now! Maybe tonight…

Until then, I’ll have to be content with the google map of the course. I will say that judging by this map and profile, it will be an easier course than the 5K or 10K. Note that the last few miles are identical to the second half of the 10K. Don’t let the lower vertical exaggeration of the longer profile fool you…it’s the same hill! But the first half of the race will be relatively easy, allowing people to get into a better rhythm.

Back in early January, The Final Sprint began a series of podcasts featuring in-depth interviews with various high-profile runners, coaches, and companies. During the last 8 weeks they have released 24 podcast interviews (and growing!), that range in duration from 20 to 40 minutes.

And these are not little wimpy interviews with “nobodies” either. We’re talking running superstars such as Jack Daniels, Alan Culpepper, Todd Williams, Ryan Hall, Jim Ryun, Deena Kastor, Gail Devers, Dean Karnazes, Alan Webb, Jeff Galloway, and more.

This is a refreshing breath of fresh air for our sport, which is often reduced to 10-second sound bytes and fragmented TV coverage of two laps of the Olympic 5K, or bits and pieces of the marathon. In this case, a specialty internet site has stepped in where mainstream media has failed, and TFS has done a great job promoting the sport of running and its professional athletes. The sports of track and field, cross country, ultra running, and road running can only stand to benefit from thorough media coverage in general. Hopefully other running sites will follow suit.

I’ve been listening to these podcasts consistently over the last two months, and they have served me well by:

1. Inspiring the pursuit of greatness. It’s amazing hearing about how these people seek after their dreams with relentless zeal. The interview with Ryan Hall was truly something else.
2. Creating an interest in the key figures of U.S. running. Too often I only think about my own racing. There is a revival going on in U.S. distance running, and these interviews have raised my awareness of it. I’m a true fan now. Hopefully the overall fanbase of professional running will grow too.
3. Creating an awareness of how people are living their dreams, not just through professional running, but also through other marketable avenues within the sport. Interviews with Dean Karnazes, Todd Williams, Perry Romanowski, Don Kern, and others were all about people living out their passions (running), and finding ways to make a living doing it! Whether it be motivational speaking, coaching, fundraising, or creating a really cool product to sell to runners, these people aren’t satisfied working 9-to-5 at some “ho-hum” job their entire lives. They are running “entrepreneurs” and innovators who are doing what it takes to live their dreams. As an entrepreneur selling a running product myself, I found this extremely encouraging and motivating.

So if you haven’t checked out these podcasts already, do so now. The Final Sprint is pumping out about 2-3 interviews each week, so stay tuned for more as well!

Runners like myself are constantly searching for foods that can both fuel our bodies for optimal performance and yet also satisfy our cravings and hyperactive metabolisms.Unfortunately, the plethora of high-end and natural food choices in today’s marketplace often fail to meet those criteria by being tasteless and/or prohibitively expensive. However, one emerging player that seems to have finally gotten it right is neophyte brand Bear Naked…

Read the full article at The Final Sprint! 

TOU Marathon fans may be interested in checking out their new website, launched just yesterday. TOU’s old site was content-rich, but style-poor. The new site retains all of the content, but is much more attractive and easier to navigate. And thankfully it doesn’t waste our time with glitzy, content-poor Flash pages, like many other new websites.

New features to the TOU site are a message board (almost essential for any marathon these days!), and an ongoing series of podcasts. The podcasts in general are a great idea and will serve to provide extra information, tips, and stories to TOU web visitors.

It will be interesting to see the growth and competition at the 2007 TOU Marathon. Four factors should cause both the race to grow and for the competition to improve:

1. Meseret Defar running the TOU 5k last year gained world-wide attention for the event.
2. Last year two runners broke the U.S. Olympic Qualifying “B” standard (2:22). One was from Kenya, but more importantly, the other was a U.S. runner from Colorado. The “seal” has been broken!
3. This year is an Olympic Qualifying year, and TOU is one of the last eligible races to do so.
4. The race is well-organized, and the new, modern website should attract a larger volume of runners.

It should be a great year for TOU!