Google map! (Read 1197 times)

Hello everyone! I'm sure most of you have heard of, or used sites that allow you to measure your routes using the Google Maps technology. As I hinted in one of my previous posts, my friend offered to add it to RunningAHEAD.com for me, since I'm still hacking away at cross training. Much of the work is complete and he'll be spending the next week or so making it look pretty and easy to use. It will be integrated into the course pages, so you can have a map associated with every course. It will also be available to unregistered users. Before he declares it finished, I would like to hear from you about your expectations from such a tool, other than the obvious function of measuring distances. What do you like about other sites that offer such a service? What don't you like about them? Do they lack a feature that you think would be cool? I want to hear all about it! eric

I have used the same site and found that when I use a car, and a bike odometer that it is literally right on with the milage that I expected it to be on 5-6 different routes that I knew about already. But please don't think that i am saying that your car odomiter is wrong. I have found that using the satilite (sp) function makes it more accurate for me to track my runs because I can actually see the bike paths, and trails using that and I think that is the reason why I have had such good luck with it. But it is really only my opinion, and I think that this function would be a GREAT addition!!!

My friend is almost done with the Google map. Here are two screen shots as a tease: The map has a toolbar on top. The controls on the toolbar are (from left to right): - add point to the route - add water stop note - add first-add note - add note - undo last action - clear map - show/hide mile markers - show entire route - create a out and back route - select map image (map, satellite, hybrid, elevation map, etc...) - distance unit selection (mile or kilometer) - Auto-center map when adding points to map The first one is a map of the Boston Marathon course. As far as I can tell, the distance calculation is pretty accurate. Notice the number of mile markers are reduced automatically when you zoom out to reduce clutter. This is at mile 20-21 on the Boston course, using the elevation map (TOPO View). On it is a note. You can add as many notes as you like, anywhere on the map. The Google map will be fully integrated into the edit course/view course pages. There are still some more work to be done before it is declared as finished. It will be rolled out along with cross training because it uses the new database. eric

Wow, that looks quite amazing! Sorry I haven't been using this site much lately. After my half-marathon in October, I stop running (except for a couple random runs) and got a gym membership in preparation of the cold weather. I'm not a huge fan of running when it's cold. But it's awesome to see this log just keeps getting better and better, and I can't wait to come back to using it 5 times a week next year! Thanks!