Runner-geek heaven

You have to love the rise in technology. Students at college look at me in amazement when I tell them that when I was at secondary school there were no such things as pocket calculators.

Of course, there were calculators, but they were half the size of a desk, had a handle on the side which you turned to input each number and they spat out a ream of paper as a result like the cash register at a supermarket checkout.

Since pocket calculators came after my time, I may be one of the last batch of school-children who were ever taught how to use a slide-rule. Today it surely ranks up there as one of my more redundant life-skills.

Although some years younger than myself, my wife finds herself in a not-dissimilar situation, having long ago amassed several years of experience on electronic typewriters and telex machines. It's rare to find any of this old technology outside of museums today.

In the early days of the Malta Marathon (i.e. way back in the 1980s), whenever we had to calculate or recalculate either the marathon or half marathon routes for length, or determine where the mile and kilometre markers were, we had to call upon the cycling skills of a number of friends for help.

First we had to accurately measure one kilometre on a flat stretch of road with a tape measure. We used Hal-Far.

Then we attached a device called a Jones Counter to the front wheel of a racing bicycle. This counted the fractions of revolutions of the wheel as the bike was cycled a number of times up and down the measured kilometre.

Now that the bike wheel was accurately calibrated and we knew how many wheel revolutions equalled one kilometre we would go that same night to measure sections of the marathon route.

For safety purposes this was often done in the small hours of the morning so that the cyclist could take the shortest possible line along the route rather than stick to one kerb. Myself and Race Director, Joe Micallef, usually acted as motorbike outriders ahead of and behind the cyclist to warn off approaching traffic.

Somehow this chore always needed done in December or January and it was cold, slow, painstaking work; stopping every kilometre or mile to mark the kerb and record the distance.

With 42 km and 26 mile marks in the full marathon (not to mention another 13-mile marks in the half marathon), that made for a lot of stoppages. None of us ever envied the cyclist.

To give them due credit, let me name some of the cyclists who helped us through the years. Michael Fleri Soler (more times than I can count), Simon Falzon, Stephania Magri, Edwin Attard (himself MMOC secretary). With the new routes for this year ex-triathlete Euchar Camilleri has been of great help.

What has all this got to do with Geeks?

A dictionary definition declares that a geek is a person who is single-minded or accomplished in scientific or technical pursuits but who may be socially inept; like a computer geek.

In other words, the sort of person who takes their hobby (e.g. running) to an obsessive level and is only completely happy in the company of other runners; sounds just like you and me.

For both safety and traffic reasons, the routes for the 2009 events have had to be altered. Instead of doing it the old way and getting out the bicycle purely to go and roughly calculate distances, we logged onto Google Maps so we could calculate distances online.

Go to www.gmap-pedometer.com. For runners who pore over mile splits and distances to the Nth degree, this is runner-geek heaven.

Just locate the map over Malta and zoom in to maximum. Then just make your selection for either miles or kilometres, click Start Recording and off you go. Draw the route of your training runs using double-clicks for each point. As you do, the software will calculate the distances. At the end, click Save.

Just for fun, with last Sunday's UJ M2S, I recalculated the route. Many years ago we had measured this on the road with a calibrated bicycle at 10.8 miles. Today GoogleMap tells me it is 10.76 miles. Considering I did this in 15 minutes in the comfort of my own home, that's accurate enough for me.

Have fun calculating all your training routes with GoogleMaps and enjoy your running.

johnwalsh42195@yahoo.it