RunMyMindMap

Early this past May, on the way back from my morning run, I took a detour to NASA or, rather, my version of the NASA "worm." I was passing by the local middle school and decided to use the lines of its tennis courts to run the worm. The area of the tennis courts is too small for the GPS watch accuracy, so the trace was less precise than how I actually ran it.

For comparison, here’s the actual “worm”:

I’m not sure what inspired me to run the worm that morning. Maybe because a few weeks earlier, April 22nd, was the 50^th anniversary of Earth Day, and NASA had provided lots of resources to help everyone celebrate #EarthDayAtHome. Maybe because, after several initial weeks of COVID-19 lockdown, during which I stayed within a 3-mile radius of home on the morning runs, I finally ventured beyond and was feeling exhilarated.

As “GPS Art” goes, the worm is pretty basic. I figured perhaps I should start easy. The previous and only other time I’d tried to run a pattern was in San Francisco, where I was attending the AGU Fall 2019 Meeting. The result was not quite up to what I’d expected; a GPS artist I’m not (yet)!

Around the world, however, runners and cyclists (and others) over the past 6-7 years have taken GPS Art to the level of … well, kind of art. Here are some examples: 1, 2, 3. If you search for hashtags like #StravaArt or #GPSArt, you can see many others. The more intricate and fancier patterns need to cover really large areas, with dense street or road networks, to be able to express the details. These patterns are more often done by cyclists, though a sufficiently long run could also afford the opportunity for a runner’s creativity. Some GPS watches have a “pause” function, which allows one to pause the tracking, move to some other location, and then restart the tracking. This function would obviate the need to retrace segments of a pattern or the need for any extraneous segments. To me, however, that would take the challenge—and fun—out of the route planning!

After I ran the NASA worm and posted the result on Facebook, a colleague commented, What about the NASA “meatball”? At first, looking at the tennis courts, I thought that’s probably not doable, even if there were a few more openings in the chain-link fence between the courts. But then I noticed the adjacent roundish field, just beyond the baseball diamond. Hmm, interesting ... would need a couple test runs to set some mental directional markers. Challenge accepted!

The main difference, the qualitative difference, between GPS Art and running the meatball on that field is the latter’s lack of any grid for guidance. GPS Art freestyle! Whereas GPS Art is mostly careful route planning and, then, lots of time and patience to execute the plan, GPS Art freestyle requires a certain spatial skill. One needs to be able to see the mind’s map and continuously maintain an accurate sense of one’s location, using whatever directional and location markers are available. The area used for a freestyle pattern would thus have to be fairly small, like my roundish field. Pre-run planning for freestyle is similar to that for GPS Art (i.e., minimize retracing and extraneous segments), except the route is sketched on a blank sheet of paper, not a street or road map. In lieu of a guiding grid, I looked for markers. For example, there is a house just across the street from the tip of the chevron; so, as I run along the lower half of the chevron, I’d aim for that house. GPS Art would be an artistic subset of MapMyRun, and GPS Art freestyle is kind of the reverse of MapMyRun. RunMyMap (?), as another colleague suggested. But, because “map” in this case is in the mind, I think RunMyMindMap is better.

So, how did I do with the meatball? Here’s my first try, with the meatball distance at about 0.7 mile. Evidently, it’s a somewhat harder problem than the worm. No wonder NASA switched from the meatball to the worm in 1975 (😊).

Though I ran the meatball a few more times, none came out better than my second try. Compared with the first try, the sphere is rounder; the chevron, though its curves are still not quite right, now extends beyond the sphere's border; and the orbital path is more properly elliptical. The letter sizes, though, are still too big (compare the actual NASA “meatball”).

Running the meatball was more challenging—and more fun (!)—than running the worm. I've other patterns in mind to try. Stay tuned!