Here is a late race report from a 4th of July race I ran, the Red, White, and Blue Shoes 5k. Organized by the Greenville Track Club, the race was held on the Furman University campus and is probably the largest 5k in which I have participated (over 800 finishers).


Photo credit: Cathy Bester


Photo credit: Cathy Bester


Photo credit: Cathy Bester

Considering the name of the race I wore my blue Inov-8 Bare-X Lite 150 shoes:


Photo credit: Cathy Bester



I finished in a time of 19:45 which was good enough to win my age group.

Results:

https://runsignup.com/Race/Results/43...tId-326859

Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/7413498862

Last month I ran the United Community Bank 44th Reedy River Run 10k in Greenville, South Carolina.

Not much to say except I feel like I had a good race and gave a good effort. The course is really nice, with the start and finish on city streets in the downtown area and the middle of the race on paved trails near the river.

The 6th mile is a long long gradual uphill climb!

Photo credit: Pace Magazine (via Facebook)

And finally a nice downhill sprint to the finish:


Photo credit: Stephen Moore


I was able to win my age group with a finish time of 38:36, averaging 6:13 per mile. I wore Saucony Endorphine carbon "super shoes" but not sure if they made a difference. I received a piece of artwork for the age group award:



Greenville has some fast runners, so if I want to break into the overall awards I have some work to do.

The race was held on April 23, 2022, results are posted:

https://runsignup.com/Race/Results/32...erpage:100

Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/7027385728

My goal was to run under 1 hour... and with a furious kick... I made it!


Photo Credit: Marathon Photos Live


Photo Credit: Marathon Photos Live

My training leading up to the race went well. I did a lot of hill training and a fair amount of tempo and speed work.

We stayed in the race hotel by the river which made race morning so much less stressful.




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I was definitely not fresh for the Life South Half Marathon 2022, having two hard workouts earlier in the week. I wanted to use this as a hard training effort in preparation for an upcoming race and I feel good that I accomplished what I set out to do. I hit my expected paces and felt strong on the hills, happy that my hill training seems to be paying off.

Photo credit: BB Action Photo

I cranked the pace down after the midway point, suffered a bit after the big hill on 16th Ave, but pushed hard to the finish.


Photo credit: BB Action Photo


Photo credit: Justin Keefe

I enjoyed the free post-race beer:



Finished in 1:28:13, averaging 6:44 per mile.



T-shirt, medal, and Topo ST-3 shoes:



Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/6712494412

For the 2022 Newnan's Lake 15k, the story of the day was the weather... cold and breezy. With the temperature in the high 30s plus variable amount of wind chill it was hard to decide what to wear. Some people were all bundled up and later regretted it. I think I chose wisely... tights and a lightweight long sleeve shirt, thin hat and gloves. Occasionally I pushed my hat up over my ears to modulate the temperature but then the breeze kicked in and I pulled the hat back down, glad to have it on my head!

The ladies field was strong. I had to kick hard to keep from getting passed by the 4th place woman who is barely visible as a grey blur over my shoulder in this photo of my sprint to the finish:


Photo credit: Doug Waldo

Finish time was 1:00:24, averaging under 6:30 per mile. I ran a pretty steady race, actually a bit faster than I thought I would be able to go.



Official results:

https://results.raceroster.com/en-US/...3kdbrn422d

Long-sleeve race t-shirt and my Inov-8 Bare-X Lite 150 racing shoes:

Different programming languages and data storage engines use different names for IEEE 754 double-precision floating point (aka "approximate") numbers:

 

Language / Engine	IEEE 754 double-precision data type name
SQL (Strict Standard)	DOUBLE PRECISION
PostgreSQL	double precision or float8 or float
Avro	double
Python	float or sqlalchemy.Float
Java	Double
Perl	Floats are platform dependent (double precision on 64-bit x86)
C	double
Go	float64
Rust	f64

 

Fixed precision Decimal types are often but not always provided by the stdlib:

 

Language	Fixed precision / decimal data type name
SQL (Strict Standard)	NUMERIC
PostgreSQL	numeric
Avro	NA
Python	Decimal
Java	BigDecimal
Perl	Math::BigFloat (library)
C	NA
Go	decimal (via github.com/shopspring/decimal library)
Rust	Decimal (via rust_decimal library)

 

Floating point naming mahem:

The SQL Standard (SQL-99) defines the following approximate numeric data types:

- FLOAT specifies the data type approximate numeric, with binary precision equal to or greater than the value of the specified _precision_. The maximum value of _precision_ is implementation-defined. _precision_ shall not be greater than this value.

- REAL specifies the data type approximate numeric, with implementation-defined _precision_.

- DOUBLE PRECISION specifies the data type approximate numeric, with implementation-defined precision that is greater than the implementation-defined _precision_ of REAL.

PostgreSQL provides 'real' and 'double precision' but also supports the aliases 'float', 'float8', and 'float4'.  The only alias that maps to 'real' is 'float4' (single precision).  'float' maps to 'double precision'.

At least in Python, where 'float' is the language data type for double precision floating point, a database abstraction layer would need to make some bad choices to end up with single precision / Real data type in the persistence layer when talking to a PostgreSQL backend.

The Avro storage enginue uses 'float' for single precision, and only 'double' is mapped to IEEE 754 double precision.  At this point it is dubious to me what a python 'float' would get mapped to when writing to Avro.