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<< what are your goals? energy gels during long runs >>
 virturace.com
Rickshaw
Runworks 2005 5M Racer
San Francisco, CA
Joined: 26 Nov 2004
Posts: 1157
virturace.com Posted: Tue May 09, 2006 12:26 pm 
I stumbled across an interesting web site yesterday: virturace.com. They collect results from races all around the country, so you can lookup your complete race history, or someone else's. That's pretty handy, but the really cool bit is the "rivals" feature. Their software finds other people who've run at least 3 races with you, and with whom you're roughly evenly matched, and then shows you your win/loss record vs. that rival. I learned that I need to keep an eye on Joseph Carboni, whom I've raced 5 times and beaten 3 times.

Unfortunately, the site is super-buggy. When searching for an athlete or event, you need to click the "go" button rather than just pressing the return key, or you'll get a stupid error. I saw some W/L records with negative numbers in them. Their database of race results is very incomplete, and in some cases, outright wrong. On the positive side, I sent them an email last night with info about ~20 past races of mine that weren't in their DB, and by this morning they'd added 5 of them.
OldManRunner
Runworks 2005 5M Racer
Rochester, NY
Joined: 28 Nov 2004
Posts: 262
Re: virturace.com Posted: Tue May 09, 2006 6:37 pm 
OK, I give up. I agree that the site has interesting potential, especially if it really can do what you describe, but I'll be damned if I can find any "rivals" feature. Maybe it only pops on if it finds three people that you've run against, and since I could only find 5 races for myself maybe it didn't find any? But I searched high and low and couldn't find anything about rivals. The sites woefully lacking in results, but gathering every result in existance is a pretty monumental task, so I've tried to do my part by submitting a few more unlisted races.
Rickshaw
Runworks 2005 5M Racer
San Francisco, CA
Joined: 26 Nov 2004
Posts: 1157
Re: virturace.com Posted: Tue May 09, 2006 10:00 pm 
For me, it initially had 9 of the 44 races I've done, and they've since added some more that I emailed them about. You have to create an account, log in, and add the race times from their DB to your account. Then click "My Profile + Settings", and on the page that appears, click "Click for My Races". This should show a list with a summary of each of your race results. To the right of the list should appear a column of other options, including "View (your name)'s Rivals (Beta)". It's right below the buttons to edit your profile or send a link to a friend.

I found you in the athlete search, but when I clicked your name, it showed me the stats for "Deleted Racer". Nice.

As I play with it more, I think the whole system has so many bugs, it's mostly useless.
OldManRunner
Runworks 2005 5M Racer
Rochester, NY
Joined: 28 Nov 2004
Posts: 262
Re: virturace.com Posted: Fri May 12, 2006 6:55 pm 
I think you get the "deleted racer" result when you click on the results for someone who's "claimed" their races. I usually get the same result when clicking on either you or myself in the athlete search section.

So they added several of the races I submitted, and I'm up to 11 races listed on the site now. For whatever reason...that they needed more races, or more time...the "Rivals" button suddenly started showing up about 24 hours after my initial registration. It definitely hadn't been there before. I agree, it's a pretty cool feature. Nothing you couldn't do manually on your own, but something I've never bothered to do before because I'm too lazy. However, no additional races that I've submitted have been added over the last couple of days, so I suspect that they can only suck in results that are posted on the Web in certain format types, and if results you want included aren't in that format, they ain't going to get included. In my case, that includes many small local races, and 2 of the 4 marathons I've run.

I'm wondering how they expect to monetize the site. I had to complete a fairly extensive survey to get registered, and fully expected to get hit with email offers from all sorts of sports gear companies based on my answers, but so far there's been nothing.
Rickshaw
Runworks 2005 5M Racer
San Francisco, CA
Joined: 26 Nov 2004
Posts: 1157
Re: virturace.com Posted: Sat May 13, 2006 3:08 pm 
Virturace must have fixed something, because now I see all your race results. I see 11 total for you, but nothing from the past 14 months.

You know, you mentioned in another thread about going sub-20 being a pipe dream. But I see in '04 you ran 21:10 based on your marathon training. If you shifted focus to more speedwork, and really made the 5K-10K distance your goal, I bet you could drop that down a lot more. From running just two weekends with this new team I've found, I'm pushing way harder and longer during the speed workouts than I ever thought I was able, much more so than when I hit the track by myself.
OldManRunner
Runworks 2005 5M Racer
Rochester, NY
Joined: 28 Nov 2004
Posts: 262
Re: virturace.com Posted: Sun May 14, 2006 3:00 pm 
Hey yeah, that's right. So where's our update #2 on your solid gold team workouts? What are your initial thoughts on whether it would be worth the expense if you were to sign on to the program?
mfox

South Orange, New Jersey
Joined: 19 Dec 2004
Posts: 367
Re: virturace.com Posted: Sun May 14, 2006 7:19 pm 
I just checked out Virturace.com and it dosn't have a record of a single race for me. That's kind of odd since I've done over 70 (at last count).

How do they get the results? Most of my races have been with the New York Road Runners club and the race results are publicly accessible...thouh not in a format easily accessible by an automated system. I've also raced in small local events where the race results were then available through Compuscore and Lin-mark (if they don't sound familiar then they may be unique only to this region) where complete listings are very accessible.

Oh well.
Rickshaw
Runworks 2005 5M Racer
San Francisco, CA
Joined: 26 Nov 2004
Posts: 1157
Re: virturace.com Posted: Sun May 14, 2006 8:30 pm 
I'm not sure where the get their results. If I had to guess, I'd say they proactively search out results for some of the largest events, and then rely on their members to email them about smaller races they'd like included in the DB. Strange that you're not in their records at all. If the NSA can log all your private phone records, then these guys at least out to be able to get some of your published race results!
Rickshaw
Runworks 2005 5M Racer
San Francisco, CA
Joined: 26 Nov 2004
Posts: 1157
Re: virturace.com Posted: Tue May 16, 2006 4:07 pm 
Here's a much better online race database: http://www.zinsli.com/results They had 35 of my lifetime 44 races. Considering that I don't think results were even published for some of the smallest races I've done, that's pretty amazing. I also learned that there are at least two other people in my area with the exact same name who also do road races. So far we've never entered the same event at the same time, but we've done the same event on different years.

Unfortunately this DB is primarily for northern California only, with just a few notable races from outside the area. Still, they've got about 5000 races and 2 million individual results going back to 1997. Not bad!
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