Friday, April 30, 2010

Cool stuff you can find online

So I've been surfing the 'net, just kind of exploring various walk-related stuff. You know, just filling time. Avoiding housework, that kind of thing. ;-)

Here are some cool things that I've found:

East Coast Greenway
The East Coast Greenway (ECG) is a project underway (apparently for more than 10 years!) to link the entire East Coast of the US with safe, paved, off-road trails for non-motorists. So far about 20% of the trail
is complete, and a big chunk more is under development. The idea is to link up hundreds of local trails into an inter-connected trail, providing recreational and commuter options for hundreds of thousands of people.

Here in Maryland, the B&A Trail is part of the ECG, as is the BWI Airport trail. There are other trail sections that are included too. Somehow I've not heard of the ECG before tonight, but I'm excited about exploring the Maryland, DC , PA and DE sections of the trail as possible training walks over the coming months.



MapMyWalk.com

a pretty cool site. You can create maps of walking routes anywhere in the US or Canada (maybe even beyond - I haven't tried). You can save the routes, mark them with various landmarks such as restrooms, restaurants, or pay phones. You can have it keep track of elevation changes if you like. Of course it tracks mileage. You can also save notes with the route, indicating directional turn-by-turn instructions for following the route.

So far, most or all of these things are also offered by Google Maps Pedometer, another really cool app upon which MapMyWalk seems to be based. The benefit of using MapMyWalk, though, is that you can also keep track of training sessions, you can share your route info with a friends list. You can connect to Facebook or Twitter. You can get the HTML code to publish your routes on your blog. I'm sure there are other great features too, I just haven't explored them fully.


All in all, pretty cool stuff!

What have you found recently that will help with your walking goals?



1 comment:

  1. I love Map My Run (the sister to Map My Walk that I found first). Such a great tool for us 3 Day walkers!

    ~ Kristen

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