Exercising with Google

Escultor

This may be old news so stop me if you're heard this one before.

I just put my home address into Google Maps for directions. I added a destination which is a midpoint on my walking route, then added as the last destination my home address again. It gave me the distance I'd walked. I was going .4 miles further than I realised, so a slight bit faster than I realised as well.

It may make a difference for you, or not. For me it's helpful and interesting. I will also use it to plot new routes for walking when I need to go for longer distances.

All the best,

e

casey12105

http://www.trails.com/googlemap.aspx

this would be a lot easier lol

mrsmulhern

Great tip! Thank you! Never thought to do that. Much easier to map our distance now. Thanks!

Escultor

Thanks Casey! Taking a look now. I may use that for my favorite trails which don't include roads.

casey12105

Yea when I ran outside I'd use it to figure out which route to take around my neighborhood and back that would equal however many miles I wanted to do that day. Definitely a great site for outside runners.

TLW77

bump for later

Escultor

Coming back in on this I want to state explicitly:

Depending on the road systems around where you live and the way you walk or run you may find the Trails link Casey posted above serves differently to how the basic Google Maps will work.

Since it said "trails" I thought it would be off-road capable but it doesn't have any of the dirt trails around me. I was hoping it could give me dirt distances.

I think I will likely use a mix depending on what I'm doing. For the normal use that I require, normal G-Maps is easier.

Explore both. I look forward to simply playing with the trails page. And I'm certain I'll use it when I'm away visiting family or friends.

Escultor

I just discovered that the Trails app is measuring in straight lines. If you click at the beginning of a curvy road then click at the end of that curvy section when you turn off in a new direction, the distance covered in the winding course of the road will not be included in the distance. You would need to click into each curve and create a blue outline course which is roughly equivalent to the actual roadway.