The Running Thread - 2019

[Disney at Heart]

@garneska Already have F-Sat night hotel reservation for Peachtree!
[

In February I need to juggle my birthday ♥ (hint as to when it is), some (hopefully) fast 5/10Ks and (Don Henley drum roll...) tickets to the Eagles Hotel California.

Also a February baby. Waiting to receive my red, white, and blue card (which will cost me more than 2x what my regular insurance has cost) in the mail. Not seeing the Eagles this time, but they are my favorites. When I retired, I played “It’s Your World Now” over and over during my last post planning.

 

[OldSlowGoofyGuy]

Are you running the half? I am not and no intention to...

Same here. Tossed it out there just in case.

Hm eagles concert, here in Atlanta?

Not seeing the Eagles this time, but they are my favorites.

Yes, State Farm Arena. Great seats, a bit of a splurge but my birthday present to myself. Hotel California is the soundtrack to my high school days (and high school reunion).

How they dance in the courtyard, sweet summer sweat
Some dance to remember, some dance to forget

 

[garneska]

@OldSlowGoofyGuy i did winter guard back in the day. When i was in college Hotel California was a very popular winter guard song. I will say the Eagles are classic. Yes i looked it up so beginning of Feb they are at state farm arena. Enjoy. While i am sure you have plenty of knowledge of atlanta, let me know if you need restaurant recommendations.

 

[Mumof4mice]

Race Question:
I'm aiming for a faster time than my assigned corral (improved since POT race, thanks to @DopeyBadger). So, I'm hoping to start at the front of the corral. Competing against this is I want to minimize the risk of needing the port-a-let during the race, by timing the last toilet visit as close to the start time as possible.

What am I better off doing? Enter the corral early, or hang by the port-a-lets? Thanks!

 

[Kerry1957]

What am I better off doing? Enter the corral early, or hang by the port-a-lets? Thanks!

No easy answer and we're all different, but for me it's enter the corral a bit later. The mental (if not physical) stress of knowing you can't make that one last quick pee stop is much worse than a possible bit of additional crowding in the first half mile or so.

I'm in corral E for the marathon and will try to just start somewhere in the middle; I actually found more beginning race jostling for position during the one W&D half marathon when I started near the front. Let the crazies that start out way too fast get ahead of you so you can more quickly establish your pace, and also realize that wherever you start there will be slower runners in front of you (including from earlier corrals) to maneuver around in the first few miles.

 

[FFigawi]

Race Question:
I'm aiming for a faster time than my assigned corral (improved since POT race, thanks to @DopeyBadger). So, I'm hoping to start at the front of the corral. Competing against this is I want to minimize the risk of needing the port-a-let during the race, by timing the last toilet visit as close to the start time as possible.

What am I better off doing? Enter the corral early, or hang by the port-a-lets? Thanks!

Get to the front of the corral. If you need to go, hop the fence and use the trees.

 

[DopeyBadger]

Race Question:
I'm aiming for a faster time than my assigned corral (improved since POT race, thanks to @DopeyBadger). So, I'm hoping to start at the front of the corral. Competing against this is I want to minimize the risk of needing the port-a-let during the race, by timing the last toilet visit as close to the start time as possible.

What am I better off doing? Enter the corral early, or hang by the port-a-lets? Thanks!

My recommendation is to start working on your water consumption to urge for bathroom timing now.

-Wake up and use restroom.
-Drink 16-32oz water.
-Don't drink anymore water.
-Time every time you use the restroom for the next few hours.

The goal is to see when you stop needing to use the bathroom. For me personally, it's 2 hours after the last time I drank any liquid. So for example, if I were doing the WDW HM the timing would be the following:

1:55am - Wake up
2:00am - Shower
2:10am - Get dressed
2:30am - Eat breakfast and last drink of liquid
2:45am - Be at bus stop
3:00am - First bus
4:15am - Walk to corrals opens
4:30am - Use port-a-let for last time
4:45am - Enter corral
5:15am - Drink 17oz Maurten 320 drink mix
5:30am - Race start

For me this 2 hour system has only failed me once in about 40 races. Additionally, I've never felt dehydrated. But as @FFigawi says worst comes to worst use the trees. The walk from the higher corrals to the port-a-lets is not short and there are ~25,000 other runners. So the lines for the port-a-lets close to race time can get quite long.

 

[PrincessV]

What am I better off doing? Enter the corral early, or hang by the port-a-lets? Thanks!

I'll offer another option: start in the very back of your corral. I do this because I have a hard time in big crowds and it affords me more open space. But what I've found is that it also creates more open space to move when I do start. The rest of the corral has spread out pretty well by the time I get going, and then I've got a good buffer before the fastest people in the next corral catch up to me - and by that time, it's spread out, too. I am not fast, but this method lets me move at whatever speed I want with less need to dodge and weave.

 

[OldSlowGoofyGuy]

Race photos are finally available from Rocket City Half last weekend. One of the reasons I like this race is that the photos are free.

As usual, mine are pretty bad. Here's the best of the worst. I cropped it to spare you the compression shorts. Evidently, I never smile during a race.

 

[LSUlakes]

Good afternoon folks! I wanted to poll the group.

Would you prefer have someone else start the 2020 thread that would be able to keep it up like it used to

OR

I do it without the list of races each week? I think I can put in the effort for QOTD's but the race list and the size of the group started to get a bit large and took a lot of time.


Option 3. Someone in the past mentioned a google doc, and perhaps it could posted and everyone could just upload their race into it using the same format and each week, someone could post the next races and the poster who ran the race can update their own times in the doc.....

I'm interested in your ideas that can keep this going for everyone. The thought of no 2020 thread makes me a little sad.

 

[Professor_Cookie]

Good afternoon folks! I wanted to poll the group.

Would you prefer have someone else start the 2020 thread that would be able to keep it up like it used to

OR

I do it without the list of races each week? I think I can put in the effort for QOTD's but the race list and the size of the group started to get a bit large and took a lot of time.


Option 3. Someone in the past mentioned a google doc, and perhaps it could posted and everyone could just upload their race into it using the same format and each week, someone could post the next races and the poster who ran the race can update their own times in the doc.....

I'm interested in your ideas that can keep this going for everyone. The thought of no 2020 thread makes me a little sad.

Attqotd: In so far as the QOTD goes there is the option of have someone start it and then nominate someone to do the next question based off replies from active responders and not the ones that are catching up on questions or lightly active on the boards, so as to keep it alive.

 

[rteetz]

Good afternoon folks! I wanted to poll the group.

Would you prefer have someone else start the 2020 thread that would be able to keep it up like it used to

OR

I do it without the list of races each week? I think I can put in the effort for QOTD's but the race list and the size of the group started to get a bit large and took a lot of time.


Option 3. Someone in the past mentioned a google doc, and perhaps it could posted and everyone could just upload their race into it using the same format and each week, someone could post the next races and the poster who ran the race can update their own times in the doc.....

I'm interested in your ideas that can keep this going for everyone. The thought of no 2020 thread makes me a little sad.

A google doc or something that is public and can be edited isn't a bad option. That way everyone can enter their own races.

 

[avondale]

Good afternoon folks! I wanted to poll the group.

Would you prefer have someone else start the 2020 thread that would be able to keep it up like it used to

OR

I do it without the list of races each week? I think I can put in the effort for QOTD's but the race list and the size of the group started to get a bit large and took a lot of time.


Option 3. Someone in the past mentioned a google doc, and perhaps it could posted and everyone could just upload their race into it using the same format and each week, someone could post the next races and the poster who ran the race can update their own times in the doc.....

I'm interested in your ideas that can keep this going for everyone. The thought of no 2020 thread makes me a little sad.

I think a Google doc for the races makes a lot of sense.

I appreciate you asking about this! I would hate to see this thread die.

 

[jmasgat]

+1 for the Google Doc, and a Running 2020 thread of any type.

 

[FFigawi]

@LSUlakes thanks for all you’ve done with the Running Thread the past few years. If you can keep it going with a Google Doc, that would be a nice way to continue the tradition while making it much less time consuming for you.

 

[Bree]

I vote for a Google doc too!

 

[nursejackie]

Merry Christmas everyone

 

[Baloo in MI]

@LSUlakes I’m not sure I have much right voting on this as I have really sucked in keeping up with the 2019 Thread. But I will say thank you for all you have done to keep the thread going and active the past few years! It has been a source of information and connection for a long time. And a place with little to no judgement or online yuckiness. It is awesome that all are welcome, all questions are given respectful response whether it is from a Boston Qualifer or a brand new runner. Let’s keep this going! A google doc along with the thread seems like a good option to me.

Happy Holidays everyone! Enjoy the time.

 

[OldSlowGoofyGuy]

Happy Holidays! Merry Christmas if you celebrate.

I'm not volunteering to be the keeper of this doc for ever, but I created a google sheet for upcoming races and results. I started with a 'word' doc, but the sheet seems more natural for our use. Consider this experimental and just something for us to play around with for now.

The first question is sharing and security. I doubt we want to go to the trouble of allowing access by individual email (I don't). I set it up so that anyone with the link can view/edit the document. I think this means you don't even need a google login to edit it.

The next issue is how to share the link? If I post it in the forum, anyone can see it, even people without a DIS login. This doesn't seem like it would be a problem, but you never know what troublemakers are out there.

The best I could come up with is to add it to my DIS profile, so that only logged in users can see it. Obviously this is not foolproof, but offers at least a tiny bit of protection.

To get the URL (a tinyURL), click on my avatar and click 'About'. You should see the link listed as my website.

I added a separate column for distance, even though most race names contain the distance. I thought it might be fun to see how many of each distance we run by the end of the year.

Any other suggestions? Maybe a PR Y/N column? Same thought: it might be fun to see how many PRs we hit in 2020.

The time columns require the time to be entered with the hour to format correctly, so 38:59 must be entered as 0:38:59.

I added a real race (01/04) and a couple of fake ones to test the sorting.

Let's see how it goes. My experience with lots of people editing a document is that the document gets hosed every time.

 

[PaDisneyCouple]

@LSUlakes
Thanks for keeping the race list. Should've replied earlier, but here we go:

January 11, 2020 PaDisneyCouple (Mr) - Walt Disney World Half Marathon (NG/NA)
January 11, 2020 PaDisneyCouple (Mrs) - Walt Disney World Half Marathon (NG/NA)
January 12, 2020 PaDisneyCouple (Mr) - Walt Disney World Marathon (Finish my first marathon/NA)
January 15, 2020 PaDisneyCouple (Mr) - DCL Castaway Cay 5k (Run with Mrs PaDisneyCouple/NA)
January 15, 2020 PaDisneyCouple (Mrs) - DCL Castaway Cay 5k (NG/NA)