The 2016 Gainesville "Thursday Night Lights" track meets begin on the evening of June 30. Cone Park Track will be host to track and field events for children and adults of all ages.

The cost is $1 admission at the gate to cover the cost of Timing and Starter.

Questions?

Contact: Coach Larry Holsey of the Gainesville Striders track and field organization

Dates: June 30, 2016

Time: 6:00pm - 9:00pm

Location: Fred Cone Park - East University Ave, Gainesville, FL 32641 (Google Map)

The schedule provided by Coach Larry Holsey is available as a PDF for download here: 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4BFIg0rntkSUVZaOHhkZUJ2NDA/view?usp=sharing

 

I have reproduced the schedule below for convenience (as in, I'm not an official source, I am just sharing the information I have been given)...

 

Running events

6:10pm 60 meter hurdles 10 under

6:20pm 40 Yard Dash All Ages (Football Ready)

6:30pm 600/800 meters All Ages (choose one or other to run)

6:45pm 100 meters All Ages (blocks allowed)

7:15pm 4x100 relay All Ages (mix and match is allowed)

7:45pm 1500 meters All Ages (2 heats)

8:00pm Sprint Medley All Ages

8:15pm Sprint Medley Adult Ages (Coaches/Parents)

8:20pm 300/200 meters All Ages (choose one or other to run)

8:45pm 3200 meters All Ages (1 heat)

 

Field Events

6:30pm Long Jump 8 and Up (Two Jumps)

6:30pm Shot Put All Ages (Bring your own implement)

 

Announcing v1.3 of my dailymile export tool

In this most recent release of dailymile_export I have updated the Python version to grab extended information for each entry.

The download bundle is available:

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

The basic usage info of the python script:

$ python dailymile_export_to_tsv.py --help
usage: dailymile_export_to_tsv.py [-h] [-d] [-e] [-g] [-m MAXPAGES] [-w]
                                  USERNAME

Script to download entries from the dailymile API for a particular user into a
tab-delimited file.

positional arguments:
  USERNAME              The dailymile.com username of the account to export.

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -d, --debug           Enable debug level logging.
  -e, --extended        Retrieve extended info for each entry. Extended gear
                        includes Effort, Gear, Weather, and Calories. This
                        will SIGNIFICANTLY impact performance since every
                        single entry will require an additional web request
                        (extended data is not available via the API). Posts
                        must not be set to private in dailymile.
  -g, --gpx             Download the .GPX track for each entry.
  -m MAXPAGES, --maxpages MAXPAGES
                        Maximum number of API requests to make (to limit http
                        requests during testing)
  -w, --disablewarnings
                        Disable urllib3 warnings.

 

Read below for execution samples and excerpt from the output file.

Full output file samples are available in the "output_files" directory of the project.

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 submit a github issue.

 

This past weekend my friend Richard G. and I went to the local track to take some video of our running forms.



Here are two videos of my running, both edited with the OpenShot Video Editor.

The first video was taken on a GoPro Hero in 720p mode, with the camera at the end of a selfie stick while the camera operator rode a bike:




The second video was taken on a Nexus 6P smartphone in high FPS mode with the phone in stationary stable position (on a chair with Play-Doh to hold it in place). I believe the occasional jerkiness comes from the editing / conversion process and is not visible in the original video.



Edit: Front and rear views in slow motion, note the trialing left leg issue and the twist of the left foot on lift-off, crossover gait tendencies:



Here are some additional static images taken via frame capture of the GoPro video:

Racing a 15k three weeks after running a full marathon PR is not ideal. I managed to squeeze in some speed work and felt remarkably recovered on race day of the 2016 GATE River Run.

This year I once again rode the charter bus provided by Florida Track Club which is just one of the nice perks provided by the club.

I don't have much to report. It was another warm year. I ran faster than last year but not my fastest on this course.


Photo by Speedy Banana

My RunFlix race video:



The rest of this report is mostly photos.

A little over a month ago I ran the Ocala Marathon in a bit under 3:19, or 7:35 minutes per mile.

For the Five Points of Life Marathon, I was planning for even pacing of 7:10 - 7:30 per mile, hoping to earn a Boston Qualifying time (BQ) and run a personal best. I also thought that if I had an exceptional day I might finish in the top 5 to earn some prize money.

My final time was 3:12:14, or 7:20 per mile, which improves over my previous personal best marathon at Five Points last year and accomplished all of my goals (except for prize money).

A confident start:


Photo by Five Points of Life (via Facebook)

My first half ended up being a little faster than the second half but splits were pretty consistent. I resisted the urge to push the pace. A good portion of the race included the company of Rob Robins who I know through various ways. The first part of the race was relatively cool, and even as the sun rose higher and higher we had some cloud cover until about mile 15. Heat is always a potential adversary in Florida and we started seeing the carnage of the warm day after about mile 15, with quite a few people coming back to us. We saw at least three runners ahead of us stop to walk. We plowed on at the same consistent pace and kept moving up in the standings.

Somewhere near mile 20 the aid station was located just past and sort of behind the relay exchange tent. When Rob and I ran past there was one guy standing there with one cup of water. I grabbed the cup and there was no way for Rob to get a water without turning around and running back for it. We yelled some angry words. They need to fix that layout next year and maybe give just a little more training to the aid crews. Since it was really warming up by this point I shared the water with Rob. It must have helped since Rob soon started to pull away and I wasn't able to keep up.

Miles 24 onward were very hard for me due to full sun and heat. I'm pretty sure we were warmer by the finish than this year's Olympic Trials in L.A. I pushed on and didn't completely fall apart, with my last couple miles in 7:40ish pace. I took 5 or 6 energy gels total. I took water at every aid station and what I didn't drink I poured over myself for cooling.

Congrats to Rob Robins who is an endurance machine, running his first marathon in 3:10:11. Rob finished 5th and earned some award money. I finished 6th overall and took 1st Masters.

Relieved at the finish:


Photo by BB Action Photo

More pics follow...

I finished the Ocala Marathon with a smile on my face and I was able to put on pants afterwards without triggering any muscle cramps, so I consider this to be Mission Accomplished!


Photo by EventMugShots

I finished in 3:18:51 (avg. 7:35 per mile) and 3rd place overall.


Photo by Ozzy Vidal

I had not been excited about the prospect of making another go at a hard marathon effort... in fact, I had even contemplated never running that terrible race distance ever again. Last year I made the Boston Qualifying standard (BQ) at Five Points of Life marathon here in Gainesville, but my three marathon experiences thus far had not been "fun"... Rewarding? yes, but not fun.

Thus, I was quite surprised to find that I had "marathon on the brain" a few weeks ago. I had been putting in some longer and longer runs and feeling pretty good and thinking the next bump could be close to 26 miles. Having been "betrayed" by race planners and pace calculators in the past, I am one of those runners who now feels like I need to get close to a full 26 mile long run during training. I have been plagued by leg cramping of some kind during my three previous marathons, so I also really wanted a chance to run the distance without any hard performance goals and maybe, just maybe, I could feel ok during those last few miles. With the Five Points of Life race weekend just a little over a month away, I suspected that the Ocala Marathon could be a nice opportunity.

http://ocalamarathon.com/

Read on for the rest of the report...