This race holds a dear place in my heart, because it was the first 5k I ever aspired to run. I trained for months leading up to it, and in 2010, I finished it in an impressive (for me) 36 minutes! This year, after a year off from running, I return, with video camera on head.. to pay homage, tribute, fan love, to my favorite series of races: the Oldham County Grand Slam.
*skreetchinHalt* Hey this is a geeky blog. Get to the geek, boy-o!
- Making this video was hard. What to include? What not to? Running the course is too many minutes. All of the finishers is too many minutes. The awards is too many minutes. Do I really need to include the bit I did with the guy from Thorntons? (I wanted to acknowledge that they provided the water). In the end, I mixed it up a bit with picture in picture – any one thing would be boring by itself, but having multiple things going on makes it just a bit more interesting.
- I tried using stabilization on the running video, but it was too much for my poor computer (and I ran out of time).
- I needed to ensure nobody confuses this with something “official”, ‘cause its not.
- The storyline of the various teams competing against each other.. well, its interesting, except that the same teams keep winning. And nobody is stepping up to take them on.
- Putting the video camera on my head was probably a bad move. I think it might be more stable on my chest. I’ll try that next race.
- Had some problems with resolution – the old GoPro takes 720p video. I might have to max-render this at 720, currently both renders are going. (turns out, 1080i not so bad, so rolling with that)
- The final video composition was gnarly:
Anyhow, back to the race:
- Its cute!
- People know me there!
- There’s a 1 mile fun run, which is what the kids are getting medals for at the end.
- Sliced Oranges & Bananas!
There were a lot of stories that I didn’t try to fit into the video:
- Andrew, hasn’t run since high school, showed up at 7am (the race isn’t till 8:30). He won first place in his age division.
- A lady and I chatted at length about heart rate training.
- The guy with the sign – from a running club in Louisville. They have four signs. He used to run, but can’t anymore, but loves to help out. At the PPJ10M, he goes around and borrows signs from a lot of places and puts them up.
- Mark, the guy with the microphone, came up with the idea of the grand slam 12 years ago (or so). Mostly for the family and community of it.
Not sure what I’ll do for the next one. Probably more of the course and the finish, but sped up a lot more. There’s a lot more spectators as we go through downtown LaGrange. Maybe try out the chest strap. We shall see.
