I first announced my dailymile export tool in February 2015.

Announcing v1.2 of my dailymile export tool

In this most recent release of dailymile_export I have included a Perl 5 version of the script. The download bundle is available:

https://github.com/danstoner/dailymile_export/releases

The basic usage info of the perl script:

 

$ perl dailymile_export_to_csv.pl --help

Description:

  Script to download entries from the dailymile API for a particular user into a CSV.

Usage: dailymile_export_to_tsv.pl [OPTIONS]

  Parameters:
    --help, -h         Display this usage help.
    --username, -u USERNAME
                       The dailymile.com username to export (Required).
  Options:
    --debug, -d        Enable debug level output.
    --gear, -g         Enable download of gear info (not yet available)
    --maxpages, -m MAX
                       Maximum number of pages to fetch (to limit http requests during testing)

 

The github repo for the project is located:

https://github.com/danstoner/dailymile_export

If my dailymile export tool is useful to you, or you have suggestions or feedback, please leave a comment here or as a github issue.

 

The LGAA 5k and Corporate Challenge is held at Ironwood Golf Course in Gainesville, Florida.

http://www.lgalum.com/LGAA-5K

I have had the pleasure of participating on the Youth Combine race team for the past 2 years, both of which... we won! Youth Combine is a local Gainesville organization that offers affordable, effective fitness programs for youth of all ages.

Here is a photo of the Youth Combine race team with the winning check from 2015:



The 2015 LGAA 5k was held on April 22, 2015. Race Results are posted:

http://georesults.racemine.com/Start-...5k/results

Photo via Five Points of Life (Facebook)

In February I finished my third marathon, the Five Points of Life Marathon 2015. Here's all of the good stuff... Official finish time was a BQ of 3:12:50 (should meet the 2016 Boston Marathon qualifying standards), Masters Winner, PR by over 13 minutes, top-10 overall, and just a few places out of the overall cash prizes.

I had 3 possible marathon goals going into the race, in increasing level of difficulty (always have multiple race goals says John Davis):

1. run a PR (my previous personal best was 3:26:14)
2. run a BQ time (under 3:15 for the 40 - 44 age group)
3. break 3 hours

I am glad that I was able to hit my intermediate goal. I don't think I would have done this without the last 6 miles of pacing from Matthew Howland (thank you sir!). I started getting some cramping in my hamstrings a little before mile 20 where Matthew started running with me. At around mile 22 I was handed a Strawberry Banana gel that tasted amazing and shortly after that the cramping subsided. I never got my pace back down but I was able to keep moving and finish the race.

I was definitely in the best shape of my life going into the race, but wow, the marathon is a beast! Muscle cramps are frustrating since it isn't a matter of mentally "pushing through the pain". The pace calculators / projections say that I can get under the 3-hour mark based on my 1:23:40 Half Marathon, it is just a matter of putting in the training (more miles!), avoiding the muscle cramps, and bringing it all together in a race. I'm pretty happy I was able to run the time I did averaging around 40 miles per week.

I plotted my mile splits (some are estimated) and the following graph definitely looks different than my first marathon attempt where I had severe muscle cramping:

I earned my first "tortoise trophy" at the 2015 Race The Tortoise 5k at O'Leno State Park. This is always a nice event and a fast course.

I just didn't have a lot of racing gumption in me that day but still managed a Masters win. Congrats to the woman and boy who finished ahead of me. Lyubov Denisova and Anton Matchev both ran strong races (also got tortoise trophies!). Here are the top 3 finisher results:

Place	Bib #	Name	Finish Time	Pace per Mile	Gender	Age	Age Rank
1	142	LYUBOV DENISOVA	17:57.7	5:46	F	43	1st Overall Female
2	146	ANTON MATCHEV	18:15.6	5:52	M	11	1st Overall Male
3	135	DAN STONER	18:24.4	5:55	M	40	1st Male Master

I have been looking for a more robust trail shoe to handle a 40- or 50-mile Ultra over rugged terrain (think Mohican 50 in Ohio or Highlands Sky 40 in West Virginia or maybe Pine Mountain 40 in GA). I am hoping for more protection from rocks underneath and from kicking roots with my toes. My NB Minimus MT00 are great shoes but some terrain wants a little more shoe.

I am not considering shoes with elevated heels and prefer to stick with zero drop shoes only. Elevated heels lead me to knee pain so I just stay away from them.

A friend gave me a used pair of The Lone Peak 1.5 shoes (the bright red ones). Of the three versions of The Lone Peak, I think I like the 1.5 best. It falls into the pile of Altra shoes that have a firm cushion rather than a soft pillowy ride. The Lone Peak 1.5 is no longer in production, so it does not make the list of shoes I could buy today (although I do still see them on ebay from time to time). I also tried the Altra Lone Peak 2.0 and it definitely feels more comfortable than the original Lone Peak but it didn't feel amazing so I sent it back.



There are some other shoes I tried that won't work.

I have the Altra Olympus maximal cushion shoes but after some trial runs would never choose it for a technical trail race or on anything rugged due to traction issues and stack height.

I ruled out the Merrell Bare Access Trail because it felt just too constricted on my foot. I was a little sad because it really looked like a great shoe on paper and I have had good luck with other Merrells. I haven't seen any buzz about this shoe and there are only a few reviews online. For people whose feet fit well into Merrell's "bare" or "glove" lines, the Bare Access Trail *would* definitely be worth a look.

The New Balance Minimus v2 looked like a possibility with its bigger lugs but the photos and reviews online ruled that one out due to the terrible tight toebox. I really have no idea what New Balance was thinking with the Minimus v2.

As mentioned in Pre-run Review of the Inov-8 Trailroc 150 Minimalist Trail Shoes, there are possibly trail options from Vivobarefoot but no shoe that I have tried from that company has fit me correctly... the low cut around the ankle makes them impossible for me to secure to my foot. I am not sure if the latest models still have this issue but I haven't really even considered Vivobarefoot in recent months.

Above are the shoes that didn't make my list.

Here are my Top Three Robust Trail Shoes for the Minimalist-Minded, 2015 Edition:



Keep reading for more details...

The goal of this blog post is to document the steps needed to install and run Rakudo Perl, which is a "useful and usable distribution" of Perl 6

The #perl6 IRC channel on freenode has been very active the few times I popped in with questions and I was able to get them answered very quickly. Larry Wall announced that he wants to release Perl 6 by Christmas 2015 ( http://http://blogs.perl.org/users/shadowcat_mdk/2015/02/fosdem-2015-its-christmas.html ) and at this point it seems like the Perl 6 community is moving along on its merry way towards that goal.  The Perl 6 design documents are interesting ( http://design.perl6.org/ ), especially the Apocolypse docs which talk about the various aspects compared to Perl 5 and nice tidbits such as "Larry's First Law of Language Redesign."

Perl 6 even has its own logo:

Ubuntu and Debian already contain Perl 6 in their repositories. The 'rakudo' package description on Ubuntu 14.04 is "Perl 6 implementation on top of Parrot virtual machine".  I did not test this but it should be easily installable via: