Ever since discovering mapmyrun.com a couple years ago, I’ve regularly relied on the wide variety of highly localized routes it has to offer.
I haven’t exactly been paying it forward, though. I mostly pawn off others’ hard work, copying carefully measured routes without actually contributing anything myself.
To be fair, I tried. But I’m kind of grandma-ish about new tech tools, and the drawing function completely stumped me. I sat at my laptop, cursing as I somehow traced the same route four times before finally giving up.
After a longish run on Saturday I was desperate to find out the distance of, I decided to grit my teeth and try again. I’m proud to announce that I’m not so grandma-ish after all: I succeeded in mapping a run! The Woodland-Highland-Sligo Creek Trail 10-miler is a longer version of one of our standard Pacers runs, but I really think the four-ish miles on Sligo Creek Trail add something to the hill loop through northern Silver Spring. The other extra mile comes from starting at my front door, which may or may not be of interest to a general audience.
I didn’t find a magic trick that made route-tracing easier; I’ve gotta believe this just comes with practice. If you’ve got any tips to offer, let me know by posting a comment below.
What did I listen to on this 10-miler? A brand-new playlist inspired by Kara Goucher, my fellow University of Colorado grad and girl crush. Goucher shared her pump-up songs with Runner’s World this month, and the first five songs on the playlist below are hers:
Numb & Encore – Jay Z and Linkin Park
Viva la Vida – Coldplay
Mercy – Duffy
Love Lockdown – Kanye West
Gies you hell – The All-American Rejects
Nuthin’ but a “G” thang – Dr. Dre
Shimmy Shimmy Ya – Ol’ Dirty Bastard
The Watcher – Dr. Dre
Get Back – Ludacris
Amy Reinink 