11-April-2020 By Jeffrey Cooper

Visualization: Run Mapping & Self Gamification

When you are an unathlete (not athletically inclined), you have to work to outwit yourself to keep motivated over the long term. For me, Data Visualization has been the key. Years ago when I first started working out, I did this by charting all my workouts, grouped by type, with duration and calories burned. This was the basis of the Self Quantification article earlier this year.

Once I got into shape, I still tracked my data, but it wasn’t quite as compelling as it was the first few years. As apps replaced the spreadsheet, the graphs became digital and I checked them less.

These days, I record my gym workouts, but I don’t have the visual tools in place to view it like I used to, with one exception.

Running

It’s different with running. It is my favorite activity! While there is no tool that I know of that has a cumulative map, there are plenty of run (or ride) tracking applications that you can use. Most let you export a GPX file (GPS Exchange), an XML file describing a route. I have personally used Strava, MapMyRun and FITIV, which all work well. For this purpose, I prefer to use MapMyRun, since it generates the smallest GPX files. This will be important as you accumulate runs and your database grows in size.

For displaying the results of my running, I use Google Earth. It took a bit of work to figure this out and the tricks required to make it work. I will cover this in a future article, I will go into those details.

By using Google Earth, I am able to accumulate my runs, resulting in a growing blob, or “land conquest”. I never run the same run twice- ever. As a result, on foot, I have seen much of my local environs.

The image above is my home area. I actually live in the middle of the lower red blob. I worked up in Mt View in Silicon Valley for many years as well until recently. It’s natural that most of my runs are in those two areas. Near home- Santa Cruz, I have run much of it. Up in the Valley, I have run bigger, block runs, not trying to hit every street in favor of covering a much larger area. In all, this one photo represents about 2550 miles of running in my local area, most if it within a 4-year period.

Gridding

In Santa Cruz, my goals are different. I am trying to run every street, eventually. I call this Gridding. I’ve made good progress, and am probably 85% of the way complete. In the more spacious areas north of Santa Cruz (previous image), you can see many twisted lines, which consist of either country roads or trails.

Up in the San Jose area, you can see the block-shaped runs, typically 5-7 miles in length. I call these Loop Runs, or Block Runs. There are a few colors here- red is for normal runs, and orange is for sprint intervals, which I call Sprintervals. I usually sprint once a week, and would do that on a weekday after work, on the way home. The area here is interesting, because there area also trails, both along the edges (not visible here, but as the city limits approach the hills), and into San Francisco Bay

Early last century, salt ponds were set up in the South Bay. While they are slowly restoring them to natural habitat, the old dikes remain, and many have runnable (and cycle-able!) trails! Little by little, I’m getting those done, too.

Farther up the Bay, I’ve also been running in San Francisco, when I get the chance. I only get a few runs a year in up there, so it’s slow-paced. Eventually I have a goal to connect this all the way down to the main blob in the first image.

Running like this takes time and dedication. I have run many of the convenient runs, and tend to drive further out of my way these days to get in the new runs. Still, it’s fun. I have learned my area so well now as a result.

Sightseeing

Running is also a great way to see other places. When I travel, I get my workout in on foot, and look for interesting runs to do in those places. If I visit an area regularly, I try to set goals there, too.

Though I haven’t been there since 2018, I was visiting New York City several times a year. When I could, I would get in a run there. Once I ran all through Central Park, I started running the perimeter of Manhattan. I’m about 1/3 done, though it could be some years to finish this one, since I live on the opposite coast. I have outlined the island in blue to show the ideal path. Path availability and safety of course weigh in on what is really possible.

The last map I’m showing is Seoul, South Korea. I was there for 2 weeks in October, 2018. I had enough time and energy to get out and sightsee while running. You can see I sprinted 2 of them, and ran 2 of them. These were adventurous runs, as I ran 50k in 4 runs. The longest was just over a Half Marathon in length, and is the long, red rectangle jutting up to the top left, ending in a point in Nasman Mountain Park. This run took much of a Saturday afternoon, because it involved stopping to take photos along the way. The northern terminus was steep, and the views at the top were fantastic, though the pollution levels were a bit higher that day.

But Wait, There’s More!

All this mapping adds an additional level of fun to my running. It motivates me to run more, farther, and further away. And though these maps are my main tool, I still use Excel.

All my runs, once I download from MapMyRun, are recorded here. I record them by year, and by shoes. I track the mileage on each pair of shoes and rotate them. And, I have one pair for sprinting, which is important for knee protection with the higher g-force of impacts. Once the sprinters hit about 250-300 miles, they get “downgraded” to regular runners. I also have a pair of trail runners. Older shoes get used for slow, plodding runs when I’m either recovering from an illness or just having a light run.

With this spreadsheet, I have data by shoe and by year, and because shoes are reserved for particular types of runs, I have that data as well. I’m most interested in my sprinting distances as a proportion of total distance.

And one last bit of fun! Since I have a spreadsheet with the total distance run, since I moved to California in 2013, I can string them end-to-end across the country for yet another visualization. This last map is super easy. You just use the total number of miles, put Google Maps into Walk mode, set one endpoint at your home (which is the default if you do this at home), and find the point that matches your number of miles. Once you have the second endpoint on the map, you can drag it around until it matches.

As of this writing, I have accumulated 2673 miles, which corresponds to the map above. I’m about 1/3 of the way across Pennsylvania. If I drag it lower on the map, I get closer to the coast. Savannah, George appears to be the closest Atlantic beach to Santa Cruz. By that route, I am only 50 miles away from other coast!