Now this is cool.
Flowing data has gathered a number of activity logs and
mapped out the most popular routes of major metropolitan areas. These maps are from
RunKeeper, so the routes from your humble
Strava-using bloggers are't included, but it's still interesting to see. His conclusion:
If there's one quick (and expected) takeaway, it's that people like to run by the water and in parks, probably to get away from cars and the scenery. In the smaller inland cities, there seem to be a few high-traffic roads with less running elsewhere.
Of particular interest for us is
the Boston and
the Washington DC maps.
over the years i've seen a few different iterations of this sort of map overlay. nike+ was one of the first places i saw it, followed by garmin connect and then other websites. strava has a personal "heatmap", which shows a gradient of colors based on where you run, highlighting the areas you run most. in strava-terms, i think a similar effect is achieved by searching for segments in a given area, which i've found more useful on the iphone app that the web-based version.
ReplyDeletespeaking of maps, http://www.openstreetmap.org/ is an awesome way to uncover urban trails. check it out!!
Very useful for travel, I imagine. For example, on the NYC map, I expected a lot of traffic on the river fronts. But I was surprised to see so many running across downtown - makes sense since very little traffic down there on the weekend. Also, a lot of traffic along the water in BKLN, but not so many crossing the BKLN Bridge to get there.
ReplyDeleteWhen I visited, at least, the Brooklyn Bridge was crowded with tourists and other walkers itw ould hve been nearly impossible to run across!
ReplyDelete