Boston Marathon: A Grand Experiment
At the Boston Marathon (as well as at some other marathons), a service is provided which will automatically e-mail your progress to people you know as you pass checkpoints along the course. Well, since it's possible to e-mail blog submissions, I expect that it's possible for me to submit my blog submission e-mail to the marathon and have automatic posts of my progress made on my blog. I've tried to get this set up this morning, and hope I am successful. It's a fun way to tie two technologies together.
For those of you who watch, my goal at Boston is to run about a 3:45, but I am slightly undertrained, so I think I may fade a bit in the last few miles. Should that happen, then the hope is to still keep the total time under the four hour mark. If they provide the type of information they have offered on their website, then at 10K (6.2 miles), the half-marathon (21.1 km or 13.1 miles), 30K (18.6 miles), and the finish (42.2 km or 26.2 miles), you'll be able to view my progress and also see a predicted finish time. If my expectations hold up, my predicted finish will erode slightly late in the race, but if I am wise enough to run a controlled pace, that erosion will be small.
If it takes the 10 minutes predicted for wave 1 to cross the start and I'm at the back end, that should mean that I will actually start at 12:10PM (EDT), but I suspect that for reasons of TV coverage, they will actually fire the gun at 12:03 or 12:05. Thus, the first update, at 10 km, should be posted shortly after 1:06 PM; the second update, at the half-marathon point, should be posted after 2:04 PM; the third, at 30 km, should come after 2:51 PM; and, if I hold together well, my finish should be posted after 3:56 PM.
I have entered two addresses and attempted to have test transmissions sent. Thus far, neither has appeared. This doesn't bode well for the likelihood of success with this experiment with technology.
Follow-up posts here, here, and here have made me more confident that this will work. I'm just not so sure how timely the information will be. (It will let you see what I do MUCH faster than if I had to enter it after the race. I expect to spend a fair amount of race evening semi-comatose being driven back home.)
For those of you who watch, my goal at Boston is to run about a 3:45, but I am slightly undertrained, so I think I may fade a bit in the last few miles. Should that happen, then the hope is to still keep the total time under the four hour mark. If they provide the type of information they have offered on their website, then at 10K (6.2 miles), the half-marathon (21.1 km or 13.1 miles), 30K (18.6 miles), and the finish (42.2 km or 26.2 miles), you'll be able to view my progress and also see a predicted finish time. If my expectations hold up, my predicted finish will erode slightly late in the race, but if I am wise enough to run a controlled pace, that erosion will be small.
If it takes the 10 minutes predicted for wave 1 to cross the start and I'm at the back end, that should mean that I will actually start at 12:10PM (EDT), but I suspect that for reasons of TV coverage, they will actually fire the gun at 12:03 or 12:05. Thus, the first update, at 10 km, should be posted shortly after 1:06 PM; the second update, at the half-marathon point, should be posted after 2:04 PM; the third, at 30 km, should come after 2:51 PM; and, if I hold together well, my finish should be posted after 3:56 PM.
I have entered two addresses and attempted to have test transmissions sent. Thus far, neither has appeared. This doesn't bode well for the likelihood of success with this experiment with technology.
Follow-up posts here, here, and here have made me more confident that this will work. I'm just not so sure how timely the information will be. (It will let you see what I do MUCH faster than if I had to enter it after the race. I expect to spend a fair amount of race evening semi-comatose being driven back home.)
posted by Scooter at 11:08 AM
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