Having been with The Information Lab for more than 5 years, I had the opportunity to take a month-long sabbatical. I went to Siam Park with my son Henry in Tenerife, a week long trip to Eckington in the UK, plus every possible moment spent with Maggie.

Sunday was the 43rd Iron World Championship. It was the first time I spent a lot of time watching it and I found it pretty cool. I figured I should pay more attention to how it all works given I'm doing Challenge Roth in July. I'm a bit daunted by the prospect of competing in an Ironman distance, but I know I can do it with proper training.

The viz to makeover is a simple table from Wikipedia:


What works well?

• The years are listed in order from most recent to oldest.
• Table can be sorted
• Including separate columns for each medal
• Including links to each athlete

Before Christmas, Chris Love sent me this tweet to check out:

All my runs (2011-2017) plotted from @Strava data #rstats pic.twitter.com/ZBG3C9QI7Y

— Marcus Volz (@mgvolz) December 23, 2017

Uh...HELL YES I want to create this. Chris suggested recreating it in Tableau, which I plan to do next week The Information Lab France. In the meantime, I decided to follow the simple instructions that Marcus posted on github.

The vizzes are built using using rstats and ggplot.

I ran into a few errors at first; upgrading my version of R was all it took to make them go away. The processing is super fast and the outputs are really, really cool. You also have the option to customize the size of the viz. I'm thinking of getting these printed as posters.

Here are the routes of my 854 runs from 2013-2017 as small multiples.


And here are all of the runs I've done around London.


Another really fun couple days learning. Now that I understand how all of this works, it should make prepping the data in Alteryx and creating the viz in Tableau significantly easier.

If you're into running, be sure to join us each morning (Mon-Thurs) for a run around Las Vegas. Two years ago when TC was in Vegas, we had a massive turnout.


Given the conference is significantly larger this year, I bet we can double it! There are 5K, 10K and 21K options and all different paces. Want to go set a land speed record? Go for it! Want to walk? That's fine too! The point is to get out and start your day the right way...with a run!

The run start and end at the Mandalay Bay lobby. We'll start at 5:30am, so get there a few minutes early to sign a waiver and for a group photo.

To help you, I've created this dashboard so you know the routes. It's mobile friendly too!

I hope to see you in Vegas!

As Eva already outlined, yesterday was race day for both of us. While she was at the Age Group Sprint Distance World Championships in Rotterdam, I was running the Richmond Marathon in preparation for the Frankfurt Marathon at the end of October.

Given there's also the #FitData17 challenge we thought we'd give everyone some data to play with.

I'm going to be making over my results from Strava.

What works well?

What could be improved?

What I wanted to learn?

Click on the image for the interactive version

My third marathon is in the books. A 12 minute PB on a super hilly course. The 4 mile long hill from miles 21-25 was pretty mean! But I got it done and I can't wait for my next marathon in October.

My TomTom watch syncs to both Runkeeper and Strava, both of which I used to visualize my 16 week training program.

The routes for each run are in the form of GPX files, with a data point for every second of the run. I created this Alteryx workflow to parse those files and create the routes I needed to visualize in Tableau.

I then used the Strava web data connector created by The Information Lab to get the summaries for each run.

When designing the dashboard, I wanted the focus to be on the map, so I allocated the most space for that. I used the Mapbox Outdoor theme map because it's very similar to what Runkeeper uses. I made the lines red so that they stand out against the map and then added indicators for the start, end, and each mile.

Above the map, I wanted to display the stats for each run (from Strava). I added a calendar on the right to show the frequency of my runs (I must admit I'm pretty consistent). The user can click on a date to see the details and map for that run.

Lastly, I added elevation and pace charts. I'm not all that pleased with how these turned out, but it'll have to do.

So that's about it. 16 Weeks | 64 runs | 528 miles - that's what it took to get to the Madrid Marathon.

Just about three weeks ago I ran my second ever marathon, and it sure was a big one! In fact, the New York City Marathon set a world record for the most marathon finishers: 51,388 finishers, 51,995 people started, a 98.8% completion rate.

Like most runners, I love my running data! My watch syncs to Tom Tom, Runkeeper, Strava and Nike+. Why all of them? Well, why not? Naturally, I wanted to see how my training went. Was it effective? How'd I do in my long runs? How often did I run? What was my average pace? The questions are endless.

I'm also in the middle of testing a new Web Data Connector for Strava that brings back A TON of information about each run. Mix all of this together and you get a dashboard of my marathon training.

Click on the image for the interactive version (it's too wide for my blog). Once you're there, you can click on any activity and see the map update with the route of each run. The activity will also be highlighted across all of the charts.

And yes, I got the data from Strava yet I'm using Runkeeper colors. I simply like their colors better. Enjoy!

For the past few Tableau Conferences, members of the Tableau Community have come together for some early morning running. Last year, as you can see above, we had an incredible turnout and we expect this year to be much more of the same.

Details:

• When: 5:30am Mon, Tue, Wed
• Where: Four Seasons

• Distances: 5K and 10K (easy enough to make longer or shorter if you'd like)

• Run leaders: Eva Murray, Paul Chapman, Me
• More info on Strava

This past Saturday, 1,589 runners/walkers participated in the Summer Breeze Half/10K/5K, put on by Brazen Racing.  At the end of the race and on their website, when you want to find your time, you look it up on a table like this:

This is great when you simply want to find yourself and see where you placed, but it doesn’t give you any insight into the entire race.  Being the data nerd/runner that I am, I wanted to know more.  Who are the runners?  What do we know about them?  Where are they from?  How do different demographics perform?  Did certain areas in California produce faster average times?

To answer these questions, I downloaded the data and created this race results visualization.  Go ahead…click around, look for patterns, get a feel for the race.