Manly Dam (2)

Manly Dam - map and biometrics

It's another amazing natural resource in the middle of suburban Sydney. The course is named after the dam, but half of it is actually is in Garigal National Park - the tough half, in my opinion. Particularly the ascent out of Bantry Bay. I'm not sure why, but this (the 3rd time I've run it) was tough. It might have been the absence of a taper. I'm in the middle of a program at the moment aimed at doing 95 minutes for a road half marathon some time in April. I'm averaging 75-ish km. per week at the moment and feeling generally pretty good with it, but it might be that the legs are a bit heavy come a race day. I'm not really fussed about a PB on a trail, because trails are intensely weather-dependent, so I don't usually other that much about resting beforehand: I might try for the next one though.

When I left home at 5:30 it was bucketing down. When I arrived at the course, it was still bucketing down. I'd just decided, at about 6:20, that it was too hot to run in a rain jacket, and so reconciling myself to getting drenched, when it stopped raining. By 6:40, when we got away, the sky was beginning to clear. Running trails in the rain is hell if you wear glasses - can't see through them, and can't see without them. In fact, without is better, but it's stressful. I haven't really done that much without glasses since I was 8. Fortunately you don't need the detail (mostly) and 2-4 metres is reasonable viewing, but you spend the entire run in a state of furious concentration.

Normally I'd run a half without carrying water, but I took the running belt (600 mls worth) and used it all, plus I guzzled down fruit at two of the checkpoints, which I never do - it's rude to eat and run, right? - so there was definitely something about the weather. 

The video gives bits of the run up and down the first hill (see the profile in the Garmin link). It's steep, but in the main well stepped so you don't overstress the quads. This is the kind of uphill I used to be pretty good at. It's not sensible to try to run pass everybody in the first 5k, so you don't get to see much variety in the backs.

I'm hoping to solve the camera/battery problem for the next run - in fact it fell off about 5 minutes after the end of the clip above, and most of that 5 minutes it has water on the lens, so the footage is  not that viable. Even if it hadn't fallen off the battery wasn't going to last the distance - but I do have an extender, which is good for 7 hours. If I can mount the camera solidly, without the strapping being uncomfortably tight (it fell off when I was loosening it for that reason) I'm quite optimistic it'll provide OK footage whenever I'm not going too fast; I'm pleasantly surprised that it's not too bouncy.

Like all the small events, post-run catering was fantastic. I didn't run a particularly good time (2:02, 2nd in my class) but still I was back in time to beat the queue at the bacon and egg sandwich providore. Plus the nice coffee man gave me a second cup on the house. (He had a new chilled nitrogen-infused coffee - apparently it has the texture of Guinness - but I declined. Hot coffee is the morning drink.)

Some video experiments

I've been working on running videos for a long time without any success. The double problem of the "bounce" and the extreme duration is tough to beat. There are stabilisation filters, but to get good results you need better cameras, and I suspect a better computer than I have. If you look at my Youtube videos you will see the Sydney ferry - auto-stabilised by Google - and the side effect of the pulsating bridge. So the point of view has stabilised, but it's only useful really if I crop out all the artefacts. Sometimes that will be OK, but running videos are usually going to be focussed on the distance/landscape.

Shortening the videos is achieved by editing; life is too short for that to be a practical solution. So ultimately I've decided on the tactic explored here, which is the auto-edit, multiple still approach.

With the canoe, the camera was shooting at 30 fps, which means an effective exposure of 1/30th sec. Because the canoe is slow, < 6 kph most of the time with me in it, and smooth-moving, the stills are reasonable quality. However, the auto-edit (1 frame per 7 seconds) means that the flash of an interesting bird is only caught by accident. Overall, the clip does give an idea of the creek though, so I'm pretty happy with it.

The first running video is my first real essay with this new technology. It has a lot of problems, but it's a start. I attached the camera to my head (not very comfortable after the 1st 90 minutes) and I forgot to orient it correctly. The raw footage has the sky rotated 90 degrees. Fortunately that can be more-or-less remedied in the editing suite, but the cost was the side black bars. Next, I can set the camera to record at 60 fps, which helps to reduce the blurring from the unstable gait, but at a cost to the image quality because the camera captures half as many pixels per frame to do it. Also, the aperture control is automatic, and slow to react to changes in shadow, so a lot of the frames are dark. At this stage I haven't worked out how to automatically discard them. But for all that, there are some nice images here - the sky/clouds towards the end, and there's a few more tricks I haven't tried yet. The great thing is - it takes 10 minutes to create this video from a 1 hour run, and it would take 10 minutes from a 2 hour run as well, which makes it at least feasible to video document the runs. some of the trails are well worth the trouble!

Here we have the result of a hand held camera. I think it goes for about 10 minutes, and I defy anyone to watch without nausea. This is what running would look like if your brain didn't have absolutely phenomenal stabilisation processing. I think I can make a case for the "art" of the artlessness of this, but not sure there's a career in it for me.

Finally, below, one more video recorded by accident while testing the new battery, and some new software that ended up as the basis for the two videos above. Nothing flash, but pleasing, nonetheless. (It's only 3 minutes, and yes, something does happen)