2010 Disney Marathon January 10, 2010 Orlando Florida – wait – I was in Florida?

Posted on January 16, 2010May 3, 2022 by GeorgeK

Almost a year ago I signed up for the 2010 Disney Marathon. Since it normally sells out early I wanted to make sure I got in this year. It sure is hard to predict what is going to happen that far in the future! Who would have thought that on this weekend in Orlando Florida it would in the upper 20 degree Fahrenheit with icy cold winds and even some sleet thrown in! What a race weekend. I had packed for cool temperatures. I had old “throw-a-way” sweats so I could keep warm and then discard. I had gloves, even made some disposable arm warmers our of old – I mean old – athletic socks, the almost to the knee type, quite bulky they were again with the idea they would be tossed along the course when it warmed up.
Mickey is one cool dude, ready to roll in the marathon.

What I didn’t pack was running tights, but I did not expect it to be “that” cold. Lesson learned… for the space they would have taken up it would have made it much more comfortable. The race start is at 5:40 am, so it is an early morning! Up at 3 to start dressing, taping sensitive areas, anti-chaffing lube, etc. I had brought oat meal (instant) to have since I figured there would not be any place to get something at that hour, but what I did not count on was there was no microwave, or even coffee pot in the room. I travel often for work and have found it easy to make oatmeal using the instant coffee makers so that was my plan. Without one though I did the best I could…. ran the tap water until it was as hot as it was going to get, then mixed it up using that…. it was edible and served to get me something in the stomach is the best I can say for that.

We headed off about 4 am to catch the shuttle bus from the hotel (Disney Pop Century resort) to the venue. As we were sitting and relaxing we could see people driving in sitting in miles of traffic backed up. This was one of the reasons I elected to stay on Disney property. The hotel was not that great, but the shuttle service to different activities is great, plus it saves a minimum of $14 parking every trip. Plus you get dropped off a lot closer to the gate/activity than if you parked since that normally requires an additional tram ride from the parking to the gate.

Still had to walk a couple of blocks to the main area… then got “lost” could not find the start area, and even asking several people could not find it… they said they were looking also…. Finally found a person that said you have to go through the gear drop off tents, come out the other side, then walk another half mile (at least) to the start area. Whew… was starting to wonder what was going on. People there were doing everything they could to keep warm. I saw hotel towels wrapped around heads, blankets turned into serapes, garbage bags, quilts, space blankets (people who ran Saturday) and many other methods to keep warm. NO one actually looked warm though.

Finally could hear the announcer, then fire works went off followed by a roar from the crowd and we were off. I only was about 2 minutes from the start line while I understand others may have been an hour or more (?) before they got to the start line. The race itself went pretty good…up to a point. I was right on my plan, ticking off about 10:30 miles consistently. Heart rate never went up, breathing stayed pretty good, not labored or struggling at all. Stopped a couple of times for some photos to be taken with characters along the route, and a few shots of the park, hot air balloon and other things. (Check the photo album for all these.) Saw Paul several times along the course. He was following the suggested viewing points map and hustling from one place to another. We did see each other at the start, then missed at the four mile mark…. odd since it was the exact same place since it was a loop! Then again at 9 and 12 miles which was the final until the finish. Ran through the castle and got in line to have my picture taken in front of it… unfortunately I still had the old sweatshirt on. While I was in line I was struggling to get it off so my bib number would show so I could find the picture later. I was hopelessly trapped in the damn thing! Finally I got it over my head and off one arm, but it got hung up on the Garmin and it was my turn to go for a picture. I am sure when they are ready I will find myself with a big smile and a bigger sweatshirt ball around my left hand! Oh well.

After the picture I did get it off and dumped in by a trash can. I had been sweating up a storm in it so was happy to have it off…. for about two minutes, then the sweat started to cool off and I got pretty cold again. It didn’t help that at the same time we headed out of the park and onto the road, and in shade. Kept plodding along until about mile 23, then as they say “The wheels fell off”… big time. My HR still good, calves, thighs and hamstrings seemed to be fine, no breathing issues but my hips went completely to hell and back… well not back I guess. The next three miles were pretty miserable, and the pace dropped off to the 15 minute range. I was on pace for under five hours up to mile 23, then with those times there was no way that was gonna happen. I was pretty happy when the finish line came into sight! Managed to get the legs moving for the last several hundred yards and made it across the line. Got my reflective blanket which felt really good, my medal which looked really nice, and some food. Found Paul and we got pictures with Chip and Dale and then I was ready to head to the hotel and a warm shower, which is what we did.

So ends my first marathon. At 5:13 time I was hoping for sub 5 hour, but this only means the next one will be easy to PR in…. just when that will be is still undecided, so stay tuned.

The official bib has your name on it. This allows the spectators along the course to heckle cheer you on!

A blanket at the end feels pretty good! As you start cooling down the sweat makes things a little nippy. Temps are still in the low 30’s at this time.

Picture that opens when you click above: At this point I think I am actually going to make it, although if you could see a video of me right now you might swear I am really going backwards….

The final stats for the race, certainly not what I thought going in, but still not that big a disaster for my first marathon.

The course winds through the parks for 26.2 miles.

…. and Mickey heads off to somewhere, to do something….

They give out one of the better medals… oohhh…. shiny…..

At the end we got some pictures taken with the Disney characters. They are in hurry to get everyone through, so didn’t get the perfect picture, but it was still fun.

You can see the full details on the running stats web page.(Index)

or this specific race.

Until Mickeys ears freeze and fall to the ground by the iguanas,
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?

Continue reading→

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