Pokemon GO - Downtown Park Bellevue Poke Marathon Preparations

Live Event Information:


Livestream: DigiTecno on Twitch
Twitter Account: @PGOMarathon
Event Starts: 6:00 am PST August 3rd

Okay, I haven't yet committed myself to this concept, but I think that it is both doable and would be quite fun. As part of my interest in Pokemon GO I've been really hooked by the social fitness aspect. A bunch of people all out in a similar environment, walking, putting in the miles and getting healthy. There are faster ways to get healthy, but to many people those avenues are not accessible. I for one can say that unless I really push myself it is not easy to get back into jogging/running. But after having spent the past few weeks consistently increasing my daily mileage I'm back in it. I can run again (see how fast I sprint when some yells Dragonite at the opposite end of the park :-) and I can feel the physical and mental differences from stepping up my exercise. I've even logged a half marathon day!

The next question is whether or not  I can turn the half-marathon into an actual marathon. A real Pokemon marathon, not just a run 26.2 miles because I'm fit. But have some goals and achieve them in terms of the game. For instance, how many Poke Stops should I hit and how many Pokemon do I need to catch? The distance is probably the easy part, I can't just walk it, I have to play the game too and do well. Let's discuss the logistics ;-)

Where and Distance


I think that Downtown Park in Bellevue is the right location. Its an amazing Pokemon hunting location. I'm very familiar with the loop, the people, the timings of the stops and it is very, very active. I've spent some time crunching numbers on the loop today and I've come to the conclusion that each loop is approximately 0.4 miles. This makes for about 64-66 loops around the track. Each loop takes at least 10 minutes to accomplish if you are catching Pokemon and tapping Poke Stops. You can get additional mileage by walking in circles while you perform actions though so it isn't too bad. Even if you are off on time, you can likely make up for it on distance.

If you take 5 loops an hour then you end up at 13.1 continuous hours. I could probably use some breaks, but is that even allowed? Should I be allowed rest? Can I go to Bellevue Square Mall and eat some lunch and come back? I don't know, I'm open to suggestions. If I'm not, I need someone to bring me take-out from Ruth's. I'll have the full-size filet mignon medium rare.

To keep everything honest I'd be using both a Garmin GPS watch and the iPhone's built in pedometer. My guess it that maybe the iPhone is off somehow and that the Garmin would be more accurate in the open air environment of the park. The goal would be to walk 26.2 on both devices, so if either is off I have to walk the longer distance of the two and potentially do over mileage.

When


I'm currently looking for a cool day. The low to mid 80's is way too hot. I can already feel heat exhaustion during some of my 6-7 mile rounds and it gets really hard to push forward once it gets to around noon. If I'm going to destroy this I'll need to be able to push through.

Right now Tuesday August 2nd is looking like 73 and partly sunny. That would be great. By then I should be hardened to the heat from the next couple of days and so the little bit of sun peeking out won't matter to me at all.

Updated: Moved to August 3rd due to weather, but its now ON LIKE DONKEY KONG!

According to the park they are open from dawn to 11PM. This gives me a time limit. Dawn is around 6am (a little bit earlier than that) and so I have about 17 hours to complete the entire circuit. If I did take a break during the hottest part of the day then I'd probably have to do 7 hours (until 1PM) and then get the remaining 6 in from 5-11. That assumes no failure. But maybe getting a lead early in the morning would help.

Criterion for a Poke Marathon


The park has 12 stops which you can see from my route map for Downtown Park. If I make 5 rounds per hour then I'll hit 60 stops an hour. That is still pretty hefty. I think to be a marathon we should only require 30 stops an hour so that it isn't location dependent. At 30 stops an hour I should hit somewhere between 350-400 stops minimum during the duration of the event.

Poke Marathon Criterion #1: 350 Poke Stops

I have to catch a bunch of Pokemon but I also have to stay on the move. Let's also fix the Pokemon per hour at 30. Every minute of the event I should be either hitting a Poke Stop or catching a Pokemon. I think I'll blow this away with about 500 Pokemon caught because I LOVE to catch Pokemon, but let's fix it at 350.

Poke Marathon Criterion #2: 350 Pokemon Caught

All of this can be verified by taking a screen capture of my Collector and Backpacker achievements before the event starts. After the event is over we can take a look back. Another option is to have 350 available pack space and just go until it fills up. At current, I'd need another 100 slots or 400 Poke Coins to do that. Maybe I should accept donations? Would people actually donate (that's a Pay Pal donation link, I'm curious) for this? Who knows, I'll find out I guess.

Social


Okay, so would anyone do it with me? Its an early start. We have to start at 6AM I think. I need to validate that with the park rangers just to make sure they aren't going to throw a fit. We could use some people to come out various portions of the day and cheer us on. We could use shirts that say, "I walked 26.2 miles and all I got was this stupid Pikachu, Gesundheit" So many options here. So little time to put it all together.

Reach out to me either through the comments or on Twitter if you think you can offer your support in some way.

Donation Goals


Trying to figure out my donation goals based on the time the event will take. I'm currently going to prioritize Egg Incubators, then Incense, then Lucky Eggs and finally Lure Modules.

Estimated costs are:

  • Bag Upgrades - These are about $2 a piece. I'm at 600, and could use 8 upgrades to get to 1000 items and ball farm before the event. $16 total.
  • Pokemon Storage Upgrades - These are also about $2 and I'm at 400. We expect to catch 500 Pokemon and I store around 200 battle Pokemon. For this I could use $12 total.
  • 16 Egg Incubators - Cover all 8 slots not covered by the infinite Incubator. Each slot will be able to hatch 6 eggs at 1x10km, 2x5km, 3x2km (26 total distance). Total cost would be $20 at the $40 IAP price point and $18 at the $100 IAP price point. I'll use the largest IAP possible based on the donations, but assume at least $40. That sets this goal at $20.
  • 25 Incense - Covers 12.5 hours of event, after which I'll hopefully be done. Goal is $10.
  • 25 Lucky Eggs - Covers 12.5 hours of event. Goal is $10.
  • Lure Modules - For every $6 over the $40 goal I'll be able to buy one 8 pack of lure modules. This will cap out around $234. I really, really don't expect anywhere near that.
I donated myself 9 bucks (that is how much I had in my Pay Pal account).

If I get some crazy donations I'll do some matching and donate to a local animal humane society. 

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