NJ Spartan Beast 2016

Spartan Race is a fast-growing obstacle course race series with events all over the US.  The three main categories of events are the Sprint, Super and Beast.  Each offer trail running, obstacles, competitive heats, teams and lots of mud, but they differ in duration and difficulty.  Among the most difficult is the New Jersey Beast event, hosted at Mountain Creek Resort in the mountains of New Jersey.  It features a 15-mile course with over 8,800 feet in elevation change and 32 obstacles.

Attached is the track captured by my Garmin watch during the 4/30/16 NJ Beast.  If you're new to Google Earth, you'll need to take a few steps before exploring:

1. Download & install Google Earth for free if you don't have it already. 
2. Download the attached KMZ file and save it somewhere on your computer (NJ Spartan Beast 2016.kmz)
3. Launch Google Earth, select File > Open, then select the KMZ file you downloaded.  Follow the tutorials to fly around the course, change altitude, etc.
   

To see the elevation profile, right click on the track and select "View Elevation Profile".

Attachments:

NJ Spartan Beast 2016.kmz (36.66 KB)

Hi chalkley,



Welcome to this forum. Perhaps I'd be more interested in your race if you took some time to explain why you thought I and other members might want to know more about it. I'm an old man, living about as far from New Jersey as you can get, never very interested in races, but I find that almost any human endeavor can capture my attention if it's well presented, and if anybody understands why your race might interest me, you probably do.



But what I don't understand is why you posted the raw GPS data from your device. Surely more of us are apt to look at it if you, yourself, import it into Google Earth (which will convert it into a .kml file), save it (which will convert it into a .kmz file), and then share it with us here as an attached file.



Regards,

washi

Hi Washi.  Well I think you confirmed what I suspected -- that there's got to be an easier way to share this data.  Let me back up a little bit ... Spartan Race is an obstacle/trail race with events all over the country, occasionally televised on NBC.  The "Beast" version is their longest race at 14-15 miles with 30 or so obstacles along the way.  (More info: www.spartan.com/en/race/race-types/race-types-overview)  After this weekend's race, I posted some Google Earth snapshots to Facebook, and fellow racers were very appreciative to see the course from an overhead perspective.  Some asked if I could share the data so I was looking for a place to post the file.  After clicking around in Google Earth, I somehow landed on this forum which seemed like as good a place as any to share it.  So the instructions were aimed at racers who have likely never even used Google Earth.  i've barely used it myself, as evidenced by the fact I didn't know to post a KMZ instead of the GPX to avoid a couple of steps.  If you have suggestions for a better way to share this with fellow racers, please let me know.

Thanks,
Chalkley

Race courses and family vacation posts in the old Google Earth Community used to be a real problem because when those posts showed up in the Google Earth Community Layer, they appeared as hundreds, usually thousands, of little blue GEC "i" icons, and that was very messy, and frustrating for other users.



Here's my advice, for what it's worth: What is most interesting for most people (certainly members of this forum who are not racers) is the terrain and the obstacles of the course. I would follow the course with a recorded tour. But if you record the path of the course itself, the "camera" is going to turn and twist and jerk and make an unpleasant viewing experience.



Instead, I would make a simpler temporary path to follow in recording the tour. (This will not appear in your post, but is only there to guide the "camera" as it follows the race course.) I've done this many times, and I've always had to modify the path several times before I got the view that I wanted. I've also used the Tools > Options > Touring to find the best Camera Tilt Angle, Camera Range, and Speed. Once you've got a Recorded Tour that you like, save that and post it in a folder that also contains the path of the race. Don't include the path you made for the tour; that will just be a distraction.



I could show you many examples of tours that I've made it this way. Let me know if you'd like a list.

I took your advice and reworked my original post.  Hopefully, it's simpler to follow for the racers I was targeting as well as a little more engaging to non-racers who regularly peruse these forums.  I may try to create a tour at some point so I'd love to see a sample you've done.

Thanks again for your advice!

I've never used a GPS device. All of the posts I've made with tours have been about old roads, and the paths and / or the recorded tours have been loaded from with the .kmz file attached to the original post. My purpose was always to keep unnecessary icons out of the GEC Layer. In the early days of the new GEC forum, there was some talk about someday getting posts in this forum integrated into that Layer, but I doubt that will ever happen. Still, if you are an optimist, you might want to trace and replace your GPS generated path with a path that would, if your post were ever put in the GEC Layer, only make one blue "i" icon.


Here are some posts that contain tours following roads:


53 Stations of the Tōkaidō 

Hannibal Crossing the Alps: Six Possible Routes 

Ise Pilgrims Road 

The Oregon Trail pt. 1 

The Oregon Trail pt. 3 

I've posted other tours following routes easily visible and some just for the purpose of enjoying the gorgeous scenery. You can find several on page 3 of my LINKS FILE.