The Forum of Benfleet Running Club

jacklarge · Joined: 11 Aug 2006 Posts: 239 Location: Rayleigh, Essex

... considering the race results. Not in the normal ‘how did I do sense’ but in the ‘what can we get out of this wealth of information’ sense. Currently the information is hard to 'report' on. By this I mean that if A.N. OTHER member wanted to see how much they had improved on the same race over the years it wouldn't be easy. Even something simple like asking 'what is the most popular race (by number of member entrants)' would be hard to find out.

One way to get this flexibility is to put the results in a database. This is a pretty common thing to do on websites these days (a lot of sites put everything including the webpage content into databases).

What I'd like to know is:

Firstly would this be of interest? If so:

Would it be better to have both running and multi-event (tri/dua) results available?
Would you want to report on your individual performance (i.e. just show how you compare over the same race across the years or have a PB report for all the distances you have raced)?
Would you be interested in a local clubs ‘league’ report?
Would you like the merit table to be done automatically?
Is there any other information that you'd like to be able to formulate from the results?

Finally, and most importantly, would anyone be willing to help (either by providing formulas, access to data, with administration or technically).

Cheers,

John.

mArKw · Joined: 15 May 2006 Posts: 255 Location: Benfleet

Hi John

The database ideas was something I considered a few years back when planning a database project for work. My thinking for it was to allow members of a website to add their own times into the database if the times were not already there. So if someone did a 10K race in France this could be added in and then those times compared with their own or anybody else's 10K times.

This addition could then open up to the training runs, so their own run times for the Badger run could be compared for example with someone else who recorded the time for the run.

I think the ideas and the points you raised are excellent, but it does involve a lot of work. The thing that stopped me getting anywhere before was my learning of PHP as that's what I wanted to use as a front end to my Postgres database. It just took too much time.

I'm willing to help out if required. We should have enough webby and IT people about in the club now to help and advise.

Mark
_________________
The hills are alive........

mikey · Posted: Wed Aug 30, 2006 12:43 pm Post subject:

Hi John

Nice to see you showing an interest

As you're probably aware I currently run the club merit table.
You'll no doubt be pleased to learn that we already use a database to collate all the race results, merit table points etc.
This database has been up and running for the last 7 years, so it has accumulated a lot data over that time.

All the reports that you ask about would be readably available from this data :

Distance PB tracking
Race history
Number of competitors
Merit table end of year summary
etc etc

The main reason we don't publish it, is that know one has asked for it !
It could well be that club members don't realize this information is available, but I suspect runners tend to keep their own logs for this kind of info.

Unfortunately, this database only covers merit table races 5k, 10k, 5 Mile, 10 Mile, and half marathons. The reason for this is mainly due to the data entery time involved in opening up the data collection to all races. Also there are some missing races, as the merit table only run's from the end of February / beginning of March up until January 1st.

I wouldn't be to keen on opening up the whole merit table database, as towards the end of the season we restrict knowledge of the league positions. As we don't like members to know who's won until the presentation night ( mid February ). But the basic race results could be made available.

let's see if there's a demand for it

Karl C · Joined: 11 May 2006 Posts: 1690 Location: Rayleigh

The idea is fab,
but I think most peeps keep their own records either in a spreadsheet, database, back of a fag packet, whatever anyway.

The web results page is more for general viewing, I feel.

I do use an online databse for my training runs, and races, as mentioned elsewhere:

http://www.fetcheveryone.com

and they work it all out , and you can link names by club.

It tabulates all your training runs (or cycle, or swims) and also has a PB list from all your races, etc. etc. "all singing, all dancing" comes to mind.

And it even mentions your PB (when you get them) on the main page, and your birthday....but doesn't sing to you.

jacklarge · Joined: 11 Aug 2006 Posts: 239 Location: Rayleigh, Essex

Mark W,

Good to see someone has trod the path before Wink

. Breaking new ground is always more hassle! Technically getting people to add their own times into a database from the website shouldn't be a problem. It would mean having a user table in the database (much like the one the current forum uses) and some form of online form. Both of these practices are fairly common on websites and so plenty of 'prior art' exists to be plundered Wink

.

The problems may arise in the amendment or duplication of official results for those people (e.g. if the results are bulk loaded for a race and that user has already put their result into the database for that race). This sort of thing makes the speedy loading of accurate bulk race results liable to corruption.

As you said PHP/Postgres or (probably more common) PHP/MySQL would be the way to go with regards to the tools for the job.

Mikey,

Hey excellent news. Please forgive my assumption that the race results weren't currently in a database. It was based on the differences on the results webpage. Normally a report out of a database has the same sort of look/columns. The results page looks like each set of race results has been painstakingly manually edited, maybe Karl can confirm?

Kudos to you and Karl for keeping this information current Cool

.

To make another assumption is the database you're using MS Access? Are you manually entering all this data into a form?

Karl,

Thanks for the input. I agree that most runners would keep this info in some form themselves but like the 'general viewing' results webpage sometimes it is nice to be able to see where you came in relation to your team-mates/friends in that race. If it is possible to extend that idea so that a person could view their new PB compared to fellow Benfleet Runners PBs wouldn't that also be interesting to see? I doubt many people would keep track of their club-mates PBs on the back of fag packets or not.

I agree more people should try

http://www.fetcheveryone.com

it is a well put together site that does a good job of logging individuals training runs / races. This is the sort of thing I was suggesting for the results page. Once that information is available in the right form on a web-based database, the ability to flag up someone’s PB on the our homepage becomes trivial. Because fetcheveryone is catering for a nationwide user-base of over 4000 users a lot of the reporting benefits are lost in a 'club' sense (i.e. the league table).

My view is the more club members we can get looking at the website / forums regularly the better and I think, if done well, this would turn a pretty popular facility into a must-see.

John.

Karl C · Joined: 11 May 2006 Posts: 1690 Location: Rayleigh

NEXT WEEK I WILL BE MOSTLY THINKING ABOUT RUNNING..!

John,

Getting more people interested and visiting the web is a very good thing.

A PHP database is probably the way to go for the results
(and yes, the current results page is purely a cut-and-paste from the official results site - again this is for speed)
But you have already highlighted the possible problems with mass data input, or singular input by users which will lead to confusion.

"Give any human too much rope, and they'll f@*k it up"
(name that tune in 6?)

For your ref: we have no download limit from the website host, but PHP support is an extra (ie. money) which at the moment is not going to be cost-effective for the majority of our membership.

The other problem with a database of results is where in time you start. I have personal results dating back 10 years, and most other members have been running a lot longer. It will only be a moment in time from now.
How far do you backtrack ?

Members current PB's is a good idea to list on the site
This is more of a realistic database/spreadsheet to keep up-to-date.
I am not sure if these are the figures MJ has in his Access database for the merit table figures.

mikey · Posted: Fri Sep 01, 2006 12:25 pm Post subject:

Hi John

You're right in assuming I'm using an access database, and entering the information via a form.

I do manually enter this info, mainly to maintain consistency of data entry.

i.e.

For members names I use a drop down menu based on a master list
Times are always entered in the same format of minutes & seconds whatever the race distance is.
I monitor current Merit Table PB's using a sub-form,

I have looked into automatic data entry but the problems are to numerous to mention here, the main ones being :

Format of information:

Excel, pdf, scanned, photocopies, even newspaper clippings !!

Consistency of member names :

Steve .... Steven
Sue ....... Susan
Val ..... Valerie
Bill ...... William
Mike ..... Mick ..... Michael ..... Mikey !!!! the list goes on

and Time format : "hh;mm;ss" ..... "mm;ss" etc

All in all a bit of a nightmare really

This year I've tended to use Karls Info as a start point, then asked at the club for omissions / mistakes, before finalizing the results

You're be surprised how quickly people let you know, if there's a problem.

jacklarge · Joined: 11 Aug 2006 Posts: 239 Location: Rayleigh, Essex

Karl: You've made a lot of good points. Some of which I'd not really considered Surprised

The main one being the 'start time'. I suppose that we start from the person with the oldest race results and go from there? Possibly the most efficent way would be for those members that have old race info to fill/copy in a template spreadsheet of their races and to collate them into a database table.

Obviously those without access to a computer would need to photocopy / write out their results on paper for some other victim, sorry volunteer to enter into the spreadsheet.

I don't doubt this is a lot of work (data migration always is) but it would only need to be done once, it has no deadline that must be hit and in the end the benefits would be worth it.

The second show-stopper is the lack of PHP hosting without undue cost. This problem however is much more easily solved. I can give you access to a host that allows PHP and a lot of other quite nice things (34sp.com) for free (within the proviso that the downloads don't exceed 1GB per month). Obviously the site would still look and perform the same it would merely mean the domain name would be pointing to web space on a server at 34sp.

Mikey: Taking your very valid points in order:

I agree bulk loading race information will only work on results that are already in a computer-based format. It would mean all the (little?) races that don't put their results online or in a spreadsheet format would have to be input manually (as it is now).

Bulk loading of data will inevitably mean some validity checking of names, this can be done by a computer script or even using the database itself i.e. have a field 'Known as' for the possible alternative name. I'm not saying that this will be 100% accurate but going over a few possible erroneous entries must be better than inputting every line by hand? Member education could also help - tell the club to put the same name on the entry forms each time they enter a race.

The time format is something that would be difficult to get a computer to guess correctly. I agree this would have to be checked and if necessary put into the correct format manually (as now).

I sympathise with your plight. I'm a part-time (currently non)mobile DJ and creating and keeping up to date a database of my CDs has been constant hard labour and that's using freedb.org (online CD track listings)! As you are aware having 'clean' data is worth the effort when it comes to updating or reporting on the database.

I know that your system is working but I'm pretty sure it would work better if the information was structured with the outputs in mind.

Both: It is understood that administrating a database is something that generally benefits from only a select few having the ability of absolute control. This reduces the likelihood of garbage data getting in or good data being deleted. Certain tasks could be opened up - for instance if errors on a members race record could be amended by the administrator(s) or the member themselves then it is likely that the data will remain consistant and accurate.

As always happy to hear any suggestions for easier / better practices.

Cheers,

John.

Mike Mason · Joined: 02 Jun 2006 Posts: 953 Location: Hockley

Gentlemen, this is getting very technical and completely misses the point of how to enable me to easily remind myself of my log on without having to have it tatooed on my forehead....

rgds

Mike
_________________
'sometimes I am running so fast it appears that rocks and trees are standing still......' 'I may be slow, but you are ugly and I can train harder.' '90% is mental, the other half is physical'it's going to get a lot worse, before it gets worse'.

mikey · Posted: Tue Sep 05, 2006 3:43 pm Post subject:

Mike

How about "onmyhead" as a password ?

or "letmein" ?

Mike Mason · Joined: 02 Jun 2006 Posts: 953 Location: Hockley

Mikey, brilliant - many thanks.....

rgds

Mike
_________________
'sometimes I am running so fast it appears that rocks and trees are standing still......' 'I may be slow, but you are ugly and I can train harder.' '90% is mental, the other half is physical'it's going to get a lot worse, before it gets worse'.

jacklarge · Joined: 11 Aug 2006 Posts: 239 Location: Rayleigh, Essex

Mike M,
Alternatively you could ask Karl to put your password on the homepage so you can see it before you log in. Or perhaps tell everyone on the forum what it is then if you forget you could post on the forum... oh wait...

Cheers,
John.

mikey · Posted: Thu Sep 07, 2006 5:04 pm Post subject:

Mike

Sticking with the problem of remembering your password

Have you thought of using a phrase that is commonly associated with you at work ?

Something you hear, day in, day out, so couldn't possibly forget.

It's for this reason I particularly like using "brains" as a password.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
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Although it has to be said, "shitfor" would be equally valid Confused

Anyway, good luck with your search for the ultimate password

Mikey

Mike Mason · Joined: 02 Jun 2006 Posts: 953 Location: Hockley

Mikey, many thanks. Unfortunately, what I am known by at work is probably unprintable on open foruma......

thanks anyway

Mike

ps I think I am now set up automatically to be logged on ....thank you Karl
_________________
'sometimes I am running so fast it appears that rocks and trees are standing still......' 'I may be slow, but you are ugly and I can train harder.' '90% is mental, the other half is physical'it's going to get a lot worse, before it gets worse'.