Interesting Running Stuff – Latest Tech

Posted on November 26, 2008September 1, 2022 by GeorgeK

Tomorrow is the Detroit Turkey Trot, and I have entered the 10K race. Today I went and picked up the packet of “stuff” which includes the Tee Shirt and Bib Number.

Most races use a “hard” chip such as the Champion Chip. A disc about the size of a quarter and about .250 inch thick and has slots to run shoe laces through (or plastic ties) to secure the chip to the shoe. This works great, and you can even purchase your own chip if you like. They have only a few downsides. One is that if you lose it, or forget to remove it from your shoe they charge you $30 for it. Ouch. The other is at most races there are marshal’s right at the end of the line that stop you and remove the chip. While they remove it for you, normally I am huffing and puffing and do not really feel like standing there and waiting for them to remove and retie my shoe. It doesn’t take all that long, but when I can barely stand anyway……
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Creating a Custom POI File for Magellan GPS – Part 2

Posted on November 22, 2008September 1, 2022 by GeorgeK

In the prior post in this series I went through creating the actual POI file using ITN Converter. In this post I am going to show you how to make that file actually useful for something… like finding locations with your GPS!

Open the Magellan POI Editor. Then open the .CSV file you previously created. As shown in (13) select .CSV since that is what you created last time (or should have). Select the file you created in (14), and then click on Open (15).

You did download the Magelan POI Editor from the earlier post…. correct? *Sigh*
Here it is again….

Download Magellan POI Editor – UPDATE 12/14/2015 this pointed to a link that was no longer valid so I removed it.

Small and portable it can be used in the car or stuck in a pocket for pedistrian use – like walking around Disney World! (Batteries are supposed to be good for 3 hours or so.)

Okay, now that you downloaded the POI Editor, and know where it is at, go ahead and open the Magellan POI Editor. Then open the .CSV file you previously created. As shown in (13) select file type of .CSV since that is what you created last time (or should have). Select the file you created in (14), and then click on Open (15).

Use the dialog box to browse to the .CSV file you previously created.

The software will automatically open the Import Wizard when it sees you open a .CSV file. Unless you have a “header” line that you saved (it the view window it would probably look different than the other data shown.) You should leave the “Start Importing from line = 1, set to 1. Some downloaded files have several rows of information about where the file came from, what’s included, who made it, etc. so you may need to change this to line 2, 3, or ?

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Turkey Day Coming Up!

Posted on November 21, 2008May 3, 2022 by GeorgeK

Okay, so I want to stuff my face with a big ‘ol turkey leg, stuffing, pumpkin pie, cranberry sauce, and not the real berries, that gooey stuff in a can… you know, where you cut out both ends of the can and the stuff sort of “oozes” out and lays there quivering. Yum!
But I don’t want to start putting on my annual “Holiday Pounds” already so… I entered the Detroit “Turkey Trot 10K” on November 27th, just before lunch! Burn it off…. pack in on!

November 27th, 2008 Detroit Michigan

So, hopefully the snow won’t be flying, and the temps are above 0 C. (Although it may help to keep the crowd down a little.) It looks like last year there were about 5-6000 runners in the two races. (A 5K and a 10K)

Double Left click on map to enlarge, double right click to reduce.
Click and drag to move map around.

Detroit Turkey Trot 10K course<br />Find more Runs in Detroit, Michigan

Until the last gelatinous turkey leg is consumed,
George

Attempting to Create a Custom POI file – Part 1

Posted on November 12, 2008May 3, 2022 by GeorgeK

The family goes down south to Disney World in Orlando every couple of years (well twice now….) we always have a good time there seeing all the sites and attractions. Also everytime I say “I wonder why there is no GPS Point Of Interest file available for download into a GPS unit”. This seems like a “natural” to me. Especially for persons having portable GPS units that want to get to an attraction in the shortest route possible from inside or outside of the park. So, I searched the internet and came up with one “Disney World POI” file… but it only has about six entries for the gates of the different theme parks… not so useful for what I want!

I decided to create my own file. No problem. Open the Magellan POI program and enter in the information that is required.

Oh, you don’t have Magellan POI File Editor software on your PC/Mac. Man, you are soooo out of luck.

It is supposed to be on the CD that came with your GPS. Being extremely lazy I did not even try to locate that CD… I just Googled until I found a link someone posted. Maybe I should be nice and add a link to let you download it from here….. we’ll see….

Magellan POI Editor UPDATE 12/14/2015 The link to the POI Editor no longer works so I have removed it. Try searching for this. Things are a lot easier now than when I originally posted the link. Not to mention the version I had posted is long out of date!

Small and portable it can be used in the car or stuck in a pocket for pedestrian use – like walking around Disney World! (Batteries are supposed to be good for 3 hours or so.)

Seems simple enough, there are only about three things: Latitude, Longitude and Name for each POI. Oh, what is that information for each of those? Where do you get it? Hmmm… maybe not quite so easy after all. Open Google Earth, pan around until you find the location, zoom in to make sure it is right, copy the info from the screen into the Magellan POI program…. sort of time consuming. Maybe not such a great idea after all, but it seems like there should be a better way to do this.

A search found a web site forum with some hints, and a reference to another web site where you can do latitude and longitude lookups using an address, name, etc. Check this out –>
UPDATE 12/14/2015 This appears to no longer be working so I removed the link but you can copy and paste to try it. “itouchmap.com/latlong.html”. One thing it does others may not, reverse lookups… if you have a latitude and longitude plug them in and see where in the world it is at. Might be good for doing a “cross reference” check on points you have.

But, this is still a rather slow, copy and paste operation. Find the location, copy the info (a piece at at time) paste it into your file, add Name/Description and go to the next place. If you have a lot of points be prepared to spend some serious mousing time. So… there has to be a better way. Google to the rescue again! An extended search for: POI +file +create and some other terms and come up with a lot of nothing…. wait what is this one…. ITN Converter…. download it, install (cool it doesn’t “really” need to install, it is an executable that runs on it’s own. Even from a USB memory stick.)

So… does it work or not?

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I was lost, but now I’ve found my way.

Posted on October 31, 2008May 7, 2022 by GeorgeK

I have been spending the last couple of days playing around with the Magellan GPS software. A long time ago . . you know way back in time, like two years ago… I created a custom POI file for all the sites at the company for which I work. Now when I travel to them I can just select a “Custom POI” file and go! Also helps getting there from hotels, airports, etc.

Then last weekend we went for a drive to see the fall foliage, and had a hunger for a Starbucks coffee. Even with 9,000 or so of them in the US it isn’t always easy to find one. When we got back home I did an internet search and found a POI file for all the Starbucks in the US! Perfect, just what I wanted, a complete list to upload into the GPS!

BUT…., isn’t there always a “but” . . . there is a problem in getting them from the standard downloadable file format into the Magellan. Downloading a .CSV file works okay, and the Magellan POI program imports them okay. The first time I did this, I immediately imported it into the Magellan GPS and it worked like a charm. Then I saw the crazy descriptions for each location in the unit and decided I would clean them up. Since many of the descriptive names are longer (I think the Magellan limits it to about 16 spaces.) it would truncate the description in the unit and look strange and of no real help anyway. So I opened the .CSV file in Excel and changed all the names to “Starbucks”, nice and simple. Reimported into the Magellan POI software, saved everything and closed down for the night.

The next day getting ready to upload to the GPS unit, I opened my file again, and crap . . . it only had about four locations in it, when it should have had thousands! What the heck, well I must have saved it wrong, or maybe with the wrong name, or I opened the wrong file and so on. So I recreated the file again, carefully saving it as an ASCII .CSV file in a known location. Everything looks great now. So closed things down until I got the GPS unit to upload to later. Okay, now I am again ready to update the unit, so I open the Magellan POI software, open the carefully saved .MGLN file (special Magellan format they create within the software) and . . . . CRAP!! It is missing all the data except the same stinking four locations. Okay, go through the whole process again, check the locations before and after the ones that show up… they look fine. No strange characters, no extra commas (comma delimited .CSV file) everything is perfect, so save the file, reopen it and look at the beautiful work that I did . . . . CRAP! Gone again. Now being a fast learner and all I went through this process about 8 times with the exact same results everytime. (Insanity = doing the same thing you have always done and expecting different results. ) Finally gave up on it and went back to reading a book. Couldn’t get this out of my mind though…. so kept thinking about it… what is different this time than before…. first time I saved it, and then immediately uploaded into the Garmin… but why should that make a difference? Oh, the other thing I did was “clean up” all the long descriptive file names. . . . hmmm. . . . If every name is now just “Starbucks” and originally they were “Starbucks at the corner of 5th and 27th Street in Madison Wiscon….” what is the difference… okay now ALL the descriptions are exactly the same…. hmmm…. Back to Excel, import the .CSV file, delete all the descriptions, put in “Starbucks 000001” and then drag down the column changing each description to “Starbucks 00001”, “Starbucks 00002”, “Starbuck 00003” and so on….. now save it in Excel. Open it in Magellan POI editor, save it, exit and reopen the MGLN file again. Hot Dang… there they all are!

The interface for the Magellan POI software is pretty simplistic. When you load up a file it shows all the locations… and if you have reversed the latitude and longitude it shows up real quick! What a DQ in the middle of the South Atlantic! Must be one they opened on an cruise ship going to Antartica.

The other thing I realized as I went through all of this, when I tried the GPS with the original downloaded points it did not find some that I thought for sure should be there… like right down the street from the house. Again I assumed the file would be correct, and there must be some reason they were not included, like it is inside of a store, not a stand alone building or it is to new to be included, and so on. What I now realize is that all the descriptive names that ended up being truncated leaving the exact same description were skipped from the file. Maybe it is thinking that location is already in the file so is attempting to be helpful by not saving duplicates….. so a lot of locations ended up with similar descriptions and therefore not included.

With this great success I looked up the next most important, or actually maybe even THE most important locations to find on a trip…. ALL the Dairy Queen’s in the USA! I now have a file loaded into the GPS so we can immediately locate a DQ for a quick sugar fix whenever we need it on the road! WOOT! Instant ice cream locations, all 5,332 of them!

Next project: Programming all the Parks, lodges and major attraction at Disney World in Orlando… the only “ready made” file I found only has the theme park locations in it. I want the Disney resorts, lodges and other things like International Village and the “Shops”, along with nearby attractions of interest… and the hotel we like there.

Until the final satellite burns up on reentry,

George

Software and Running = Part 4

Posted on October 18, 2008May 3, 2022 by GeorgeK

Okay so I love the Garmin and it makes recording the results of training and races such as tracking mileage, time, pace, heart rate and so on so simple.

. . . but it seems I ~~often~~ ~~sometimes~~ once in a blue moon forget to hit the “stop” button at the end of the race/workout. I am usually so excited that I made it to the end without passing out that thinking about stopping the watch doesn’t occur until my brain gets oxygenated enough to think of things like that!

I just ran the greatest race of my (very short) running career! All the stars, moons and planets were in perfect harmony with Mother Nature and my circadian rhythm. When I crossed the finish line and saw the timer and heard the beep of the timing mat I knew I had just officially set a new PR!! Elated I get the timing chip off the shoe without falling over, I stagger over and grab a bottle of water, a banana, a ~~handful of cookies~~ single very small sized cookie, and start to regain focus in my eyes. Dang it all, the watch is still running, and now the pace appears to be super slow, and the GPS track looks like a drunken ant has crawled around on my computer screen. Now, what to do…. The Garmin Training Center software is useless, it will grab the data from the watch, record it and that is about all. I can download the data from the watch to SportTracks, see all the data and the map UGH!! Look at that mess! Ah HA! SportTracks will let me split an entry! So I lop off the extra data based on a careful analysis of the time or distance looking at the expanded map, delete the overage “split” and now I have my official time and the run in SportTracks looking pretty good. But that doesn’t help me in either Garmin Training Center or Runners Studio, since I can only export in Fitlog or CVS and cannot import anything other than a TCX file into Runners Studio.

TCX Converter to the rescue! I found a reference to this software on a blog and tried it out. After several false starts I got the combination of exports and imports down to where it is not all that difficult to edit and save a file.
• Import run data into SportTracks.
• Split the run at the correct point.
• Delete the extra split that shows up now.
• Export from Sport Tracks as a “fitlog” file. (Which seems to be the one that saves all the data including Heart Rate information.)
• Import the new XXX.fit file into TCX Converter.
• Save as a new TCX file.
• Import the data into Runners Studio as a new run.
(Oops problem here is right now I cannot import as a “Race” which is different than a workout, and a workout apparently cannot be converted to a race once it is in Runners Studio.) Hopefully there will be a cure for that in the next release of Runners Studio. It may just be an oversight that only CVS files can be imported as a Race, since there isn’t much difference between a workout and a race.

In the following picture I have removed the course name so it is blank, I have selected the “Export” tab and then the “Export as TCX”, which then gives me the option to select the Activity Type from a pick list.

Net result is that I am happy all the way around, thanks to the TCX Converter utility. Now, if they would only add the ability to trim a file right inside of TCX Converter I would have “the perfect solution”. Since it can already read the data from the Garmin FR 305 directly, it would make it a import, trim and export operation which could be used by the other programs!

You can check out TCX Converter at
Unless you read Italian use the “Convert to English” button.

UPDATE: The latest version of TCX Converter is 1.7.1, it now has the ability to cut off the excess time! It can also change the type of activity since it seemed like I was getting a default value that I did not want.
Looking at the points find the time you want to end the track at, and just right click and select the “Remove the points below this” option from the drop down.

Until the last time I forget is forgotten,

George