MARINE PARK IS ON THE MAP

I have good news and bad news.  Good news is I am still on this ambitious project of "mapping" every Brooklyn neighborhood by running and spelling their names, in that neighborhood.  Or somewhere close.  Just this weekend I finally completed "Marine Park".  The bad news is I took too long to do this Garmin web site finally got rid of Classic view so now any additional maps will look slightly different.  "Marine Park" is one such.  The lines are darker, which is fine, but luckily the underlying map is still the same.  Whew.  All the more reason I should hurry up and finish this before any more changes, whether with Garmin.com or with my own health.  You never know, one day you can be healthy and all, the next day you can no longer run.

For "Marine Park", I broke one of my rules about running.  I hate driving and when I go for a run, I absolutely don't want to drive somewhere just to run there.  But I have to be realistic now.  While I can certainly drive to Marine Park to do the run, it is just much faster when I drive.  And there is plenty of parking at the park, so I really have no excuse not to.  With this executive decision made, I plan to drive to Prospect Park etc some weekend day, really early in the morning for a better chance of finding a parking spot, and be done with those faraway places.  Let's hope the map will be filled soon!

NEWTON RUNNING SPELL CHALLENGE WEEK 2, AND MORE

Today marks the end of Week 2 of the Run It Feel It Spell It Challenge sponsored by Newton Running.  I didn't make the cut for the first week and we'll have to wait a few days to see if my entry below is any good.

My accompanying text is

@NewtonRunning #RunningMakesMeFeel HOT, b/c I sweat easily, but, ladies, feel free to think "hot-looking" #promo

Nowhere does the contest rule says there will be points for humor but I couldn't help it. The rule does say

1) creativity and composition of word(s) and caption (33%), 2) originality of word(s) (33%), and 3) ability of word(s) and caption to portray how running makes you feel (34%) (the “Judging Criteria”).

Criteria #1 is easy to understand, #2 is kinda tricky, as there are only so many adjectives you can describe the feeling associated with running.  Truly feeling it, and the word should not be crazy long that one would have to run marathon distance to make it.  Criteria #3 is even harder to interpret, I guess it's all in the way you write your caption, with Twitter's 140-character limit and all.  Instagram can be used also but I hate its square limitation.  My GPS arts are usually rectangular-shaped, i.e. two distinct dimensions and not all four sizes are equal, so to satisfy Instagram I would have to do some extra work.

One day, instead of worrying about these restrictions of the Spell Challenge, I went out for a run with something else in mind to spell.  Johnson & Johnson is a great sponsor of Charity Miles, which I in turn am a great supporter.  While I can technically run whatever distance needed to spell out Johnson & Johnson, I decided to take advantage of the repeated name and only ran Johnson.

I took care to include the plus sign under Johnson.  I know, it is not much of a plus sign but my restrain with GPS art is everything has to be connected.  At the moment I did not consider running up and down East 3rd Street instead of making the loop.

Johnson & Johnson, after a few minutes in Photoshop.  Since Ocean Parkway is already highlighted on the map, I artificially lined it up when I stitched the original picture and its clone.  I carefully cropped out the plus sign in the lower picture.  Could be better, but good enough for illustration purpose.

NEWTON RUNNING CHALLENGE, NOT!

Yesterday was the last day of Week 1 of the Newton Running Run It Feel It Spell It Challenge.  I already got my entry done and was itching to run.  I recall that Charity Miles, the org behind the app of the same name, is on a quest to get the big cola company, Coca-Cola, to sign on as a sponsor.  For those who don't know, Charity Miles app allows runners etc to raise funds for charities as they go about doing what they love, be it running, cycling, walking etc.  In the beginning I had issues with the app but it has improved much since then.  I met the app's founder, Gene Gurkoff, a few times and he's one cool guy.  I use the app regularly and more than once help promote it in person or through my GPS art.  Fresh off my latest work project (read: unemployed) this week, I had a little time in the evening to help Gene with his push for Coca-Cola to become a sponsor.

The first screen below is the usual GPS art made with my Garmin Forerunner 210.  Note that I live near the letter "L" and since I wanted to start "writing" and running ASAP, I "wrote" the phrase backward, starting with the second "a" going from east to west.  It took about 1.5 hours to traverse the 8.37-km course.  I made a booboo with the leftmost "C", the curve should come down into Bay 28th Street but I was at the end of the run and was not thinking straight.  I always do these runs from memory, with occasional checking of the map on my smartphone, never with a piece of paper in hand or the course already marked.  Maybe I should, to avoid these little mistakes.

CocaCola as made by GPS watch Garmin Forerunner 210.

While checking out other entries in the Newton Running Spell Challenge, I noticed the ghostly writings in some of them.  I am not too fond of them but curious what app was used.  I already experimented with MapMyRun and yesterday I checked out Runtastic.  That was it, and the result is shown below.

Runtastic map with speed info and mile markers.

Runtastic maps do not have to be shown that way.  It's just the default view.  I played around with the map via a web browser on a real computer, i.e. not on a smartphone or the like, and was able to show just the path itself.  No elevation, no speed, no markers.  The route even shows in red, like Coca-Cola's color!

I hope Gene and Charity Miles will get the Coca-Cola sponsorship!

Runtastic map without extraneous info.

SPORTS

I am no fan of working under pressure but sometimes it's a great way to get things done.  Some weeks ago I was given the chance to decorate a storefront with my GPS art, or "gwriting" as I call it.  Partly because my mornings were not so free for a few weeks and partly because of other reasons, I didn't get around to making the phrase I had in mind.  Then I got around to contacting Garmin about the broken strap on my Forerunner 210 and they offer to replace it at no charge.  Now that's great customer service!  The only issue though is it will take x days to get the GPS watch back to me.  Only today I got around to making the third word of the three-word phrase I have in mind.  Part of the delay was that I contemplated about making the phrase in one bike ride.  It takes about an hour to make a four- or five-letter word via running, so doing the whole phrase in one run would take too many hours of the day.  Besides, the longer the phrase, the more likely I'll make a mistake.  I like running more than biking, so running it had to be.  I plan to do the phrase in three runs, one word per run, then digitally combine the words and print the final picture in poster mode, i.e. onto 8.5x11 pages and laboriously tape the pages together.  It didn't look so bad when I made the family tree so it should work.  Worst case scenario, I'll splurge and print at Staples, hope it won't cost much, as I'm doing this project expecting only fleeting fame and no fortune.  In the short term anyway.  We’ll see!

With the Garmin needing to be sent away soon, I'll be running every day for the next few days to make sure I have all the maps I need before I no longer have watch.  It may be possible to borrow a GPS watch from someone in a track club, but I'd rather not.

SOME RECENT GPS ARTS

Did you miss my GPS arts ("gwriting" as I call it)?  Here are some I did in recent weeks but didn't get to post them.

Do yo no Bo?  ("Do you know Bo?")  As the name has only two letters, not too challenging, I tried to make it more challenging by giving it a bevel appearance.  I ran on both sides of the road, with diagonal lines at the corners.  Unfortunately, at the scale I ran at, the effect was not very visible.  Next time I'll use whole block instead of a street's width.

The exact opposite of "Bo", "Genevieve" has many letters and also that tricky positioning of "i" and "e".  I memorized the spelling by thinking "Gene" (as in Gene Kelly) + "vi" (the Unix text editor) + "eve" (the night before a major event)

"A rose by any other name..."

I thought I thaw Todd!

TOTA! TOTA! TOTA!

Today's gwriting is for my #1 blog fan, TOTA!  There are only four letters to write so I tried to give the letters a little thickness, by traveling on the other side of the street, or the other side of the block.  The extra tail under the leftmost T is regrettable, but I don't like to have the path ends there, where in some view Garmin would add a drop-pin, which would sorta messes up the picture.

I thought of also draw an arch over the word, but it was too hot by the time I finished so I called it a day.  I did cool down, twice, by sticking my head into the spray fountain at Bath Playground.  It was so refreshing!

In other news, I am glad to report I was wrong about Google Auto Awesome not able to distinguish the background of my photos from Wednesday's Al Goldstein race.  It seems a little time is needed, that is all.  This morning I discovered that a little animation was made out of the Al Goldstein photos, https://plus.google.com/109153989599275468311/posts/3w7VBbh8SUg

BELATED HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JEFF GALLOWAY

Yesterday I was going to trace out a run route that says "Hire Me".  I felt that it would help me land a job very soon, but then I checked my calendar and saw that it was Jeff Galloway's birthday.  Mr. Galloway is well-known in the running community for championing the Run-Walk-Run method.  While doing the June Run-Everyday Challenge, I started to plan ahead what to generate for each run, or places to visit.  I like to be current, so I looked up birthdays of famous people in the running community.  I got Hal Higdon covered, now Galloway, and next week is Mary Wittenberg.  Other than famous runners, I took requests from friends and also stayed with special events, like Mother's Day or Father's Day.  Hmm, that reminds me I should do "TOTA" soon.

On the Garmin Connect web site, I usually make a screenshot of the path from the animated screen.  It's bigger and is usually better, but not with the Galloway path.  For some reason, the screenshot from the animated screen, second picture below, shows the "L"s as being connected above the base line.  To give the "L"s extra width, I did use iTrespass near their bottom, so it's possible I paused and unpaused the watch at the wrong time.  However, the first picture, captured from the Details screen on Garmin Connect, shows the "L"s as I intended.  Weird how the GPS sometimes act up.

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/341289254#

NO GARMIN STILL RUNNIN'

After not even four months of usage, my Garmin GPS watch has stopped working.  It still works as a regular watch, but no longer record distance.  It would pick up satellite signal and count the time as I start moving, but the distance remains zero.  At first, I thought perhaps I pressed some wrong sequence of buttons and, since I was out for a walk, I simply stuck with a rectangular path for which I know the distance.  The next time it was a run and I wasted some minutes to try to "fix" it.  Luckily I did not waste too much and it still turned out to be a decent run.  Afterward, I simply mapped the route using DailyMile.com's tools.  It is a bit tedious but it works fine.


I looked at the Garmin manual, online, and it did not offer much useful troubleshooting info for my scenario.  The most I can do is shut down the device and that I did, to no avail.  What I read next in the online forums only disheartened me.  It seems some files got corrupted on the GPS watch and while it is possible to re-install the files the action can only be done via a Windoze machine, which I do not have at home.  Argh!  It is not a life-and-death situation so I decided to write to Garmin tech support and wait for their answer, which is supposed to come in 3 business days.  In the mean time, I will just run without a GPS watch.  I did it for more than two years, it is not that difficult.  I already have a few routes plotted out in DailyMile.  While it means I will need to stick to the route, it is no biggie.  The running is the important part here, how precisely I record it is secondary.


Still, I refused to believe there is no way to reset the device, back to factory default if it comes to that.  I Googled again and this time found the link at


https://support.garmin.com/support/searchSupport/case.faces;jsessionid=2066DB0E5EB57DB81D9FC438C8AF99FF


Sure enough, there IS a way to reset the thing.  I tried it and even though it was already past 11 P.M. and snowing lightly outside, I just had to verify that all was well again.  Yessirree Bob, all is well again in Qaptain Qwerty's running life.

Have G.P.S. Will L.S.D.

When I took up running as a hobby/sports, one primary reason was the relative low monetary commitment I needed.  I already had some sweatpants, sweatshirts, tons of T-shirts, some khaki shorts, the usual guy clothes.  For winter running, I put on layers, usually a thick hoodie on the outside, plus whatever gloves I can come across.  The only big cost associated with the hobby is entry fees to the races the New York Road Runners organized.  As I got more into it, I spent money on tech shirts and compression shorts, tights, and such.  A few months ago, I started to stock up on energy gels, too, namely GUs.  Luckily they do not cost that much but it's still additional spending.  For the longest time I put off buying a sports watch. Some call it G.P.S. watch and many call it Garmin, kinda like how people Google even though they use Yahoo!Search or make Xerox copies using a Ricoh photocopier.  From now on, I shall call it a G-watch.

I ran fine without a Garmin, whether it be an NYRR event or out training on my own.  NYRR races are usually in Central Park and consist of at most 2 big loops, perhaps a turn somewhere to add a little distance to cover the length of the race.  DailyMile's map function works for me and I had a good idea how many Ks I cover during my runs, even if I always have to measure the distance afterward.

It was at the end of the (Inaugural) Brooklyn Marathon (BM) that I decided it was time to get a Garmin.  For the BM, I misinterpreted the direction for the course and was going to run a full third loop of the lower loop in Prospect Park.  I did not have a Garmin and thought I would need to run two full lower loops, six big loops, finally one more lower loop, in full, through Center Drive, then re-enter Center Drive one last time for the finish line.  Good thing I was told not to do another full lower loop and just walked through the finish line.  I was pleasantly surprised to learn that my undramatic finish was captured on camera. (www.backprint.com , Event = Brooklyn Marathon 11/20/2011, Runner # 207).

I took Monday off to recuperate from the BM.  On Tuesday, back to work, in Jersey City, I made a trip to the local running store, Runner's High.  There were few choices of GPS watch and they certainly did not have the $130 model, with squarish face, that a few runner friends told me about.  I settled for the $200 watch that was recommended.  I was a bit disappointed that the watch does not use a micro-USB cable so that I would not have to worry about losing a specialized cable.  I was afraid the watch would only measure distance in miles but luckily it can do both miles and kilometers.  Of course I went with km, as well as centimeter for my height and kilogram for my weight.  I unreasonably expected it to be able to pick up satellite signal, like how a cell phone appears to be able to, but like I hinted at, it was unreasonable expectation on my part.

Assuming the G-watch is correct all the time, it is great to be able to run almost anywhere.  So far I have not experienced losing satellite signal.  My running routine up to recently was x km out and back.  DailyMile's map tool has such a function, Out And Back.  I would click along the route to some point of return, then click the icon and my route is complete, double of what I already measured up until then.  With a G-watch, I am no longer limited to the few routes I stick to but I can turn wherever I fancy.  I just have to make sure I cover at least 8 km (5 miles) during the weekday runs, perhaps more on the weekends.

On Sunday I initially planned to run the Astoria Waterfront, taking the same route when I dropped off TOTA at LaGuardia during her last visit.  After parking the car, I decided to give the Triboro Bridge a try.  Armed with the G-watch, I was able to just run and not worry if I will run too far or too short.  The only factor I had to consider was the approaching sunset.  If it was not getting dark so soon on Randalls Island, I would venture about the island some more, especially its waterfront, but there was no time so I only ran from Queens to Randalls Island and then back.  I wanted to do 8 km but the trip to and from Randalls Island covered less than that so I simply went to the track at Astoria Park to run some more.  I ended up with 8.88 km, a number I am sure many superstitious Chinese think is a good sign.

Today, I thought about running to Kaiser Park but my feet had a mind of their own and took me toward the Aquarium instead.  On the Boardwalk, normally I would turn east to get to Bright Playground.  Not today, as I went west instead, at first with the former spot of Shoot the Freak as the goal.  When I got there, the G-watch said it was less than 4 km so I went further and turned around after I passed the Parachute Jump.  Even after I got back near home the total distance was not 8 km so I went a block or two more to reach the distance I wanted.

By the way, "L.S.D." means "Long, Slow Distance" in running lingo.  Runners do not do drugs!