Favorite Sites

usatf.org/routes

Here's the start of a new regular thingy. I'm going to write about some of my favorite sites online. The first is USA Track & Field's "America's Running Routes" page found at usatf.org/routes. With help from a Google Maps feature, you can look up your area with a satellite image or a drawn streets map and plot out the route that you just ran or plan to run. Then it tells you the total distance of that route. This is super helpful for those of us who run but don't own foot pods or gps units that map our routes automatically. I use this page all the time, and I am always telling other runners about it.

I remember back in like 2003 when I was running on a canal in central Phoenix and I had an idea for the exact same feature. I went online looking for the AZ canals website, sort of assuming that they would already have this sort of thing available, since they are always bragging about their Sonoran Trail or whatever that thing is that runners are supposed to follow that moves along the canal for a while. Anywho, I'm glad that someone finally actually designed the damn thing, and I think that there are a few others out there now, too.

“Learn to run when feeling the pain: then push harder.”
-William Sigei

“Great people and great athletes realize early in their lives their destiny, and accept it. Even if they do not consciously realize the how, the where, the what."
-Percy Wells Cerutty

“When I first started running, I was so embarrassed I'd walk when cars passed me. I'd pretend I was looking at the flowers.”
-Joan Benoit Samuelson