James Webster’s Weblog

I’ve wanted to jog regularly, or more accurately run, since I was young. Until the last month it never quite worked probably because I focused on speed not distance . Suddenly I’m running several times a week and loving it, looking forward to the next opportunity. There are a few reasons behind this but a big one is the enjoyment of planning the routes. Witney has some beautiful footpaths around it and they are great for jogging.

I’ve been planning my routes using Google Maps. To find my routes search for “Jogging Witney”. You should get about 10 Google results in a panel on the left hand side. Scroll down and at the bottom you should see a link to user created content (like this). I’ve saved five routes so far, click on any of them and a pop-up should appear on the map. To see the route you need to click again on the ‘Jogging Routes’ link. If that all worked you should be looking at some pretty coloured squiggle. If it didn’t work then try moving the map to Witney and re-searching - Google’s context based search algorithms don’t always do what you want.

The best way to view the routes is to select the hybrid option.

Three of my routes going through the country park

To add your own routes to a map select My Maps then Create new Map.

These four icons should now have appeared on the map. They are for moving, drawing a pin, a line and a shape. To draw a route you just need the line. You can start anywhere on your route (assuming it’s circular). Keep clicking and dragging the map until you are finished and then double click to finish. You can now give your route a name and a description, it can be saved for public or private viewing.

You can now also view your routes on Google Earth and even fly around them! To load your routes into Google Earth you just need to download the KML file. There is a link on the top right hand side of the map. KML (Keyhole Markup Language) is simply an XML file describing what you’ve just drawn on the screen. The file should already be associated with Google Earth, if it isn’t you’ll need to save the file and then load it into Google Earth using Add -> Network Link (that on the Mac version).

That’s really cool but there is one big thing missing - how long is each route? It can only be a matter of time before Google add this but until then you’ve three options.

1. Run it - with a pedometer or Nike+ (which really is super cool.)
2. Use the Google distance measurement tool (further down the My Maps page). To use this you need to redraw your entire route. That’s easy enough now that’s on the map but it is time consuming.
3. Use this neat (but random) site.

The site needs your KML file pasted in as text. If you saved it to disk then just open it in a text editor and copy across. Copying from Google Earth is even easier. Right click (or equivalent) on the route (which should be showing in the Places, My Places pane on the left hand side. Copy and then paste into the middle text box entitled GE PATH LENGTH MEASUREMENT. Hit the calculate button and you should get back a distance with a breakdown of the distance between each of your points.

Now you just need to actually get out there and run it…

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