How far did I go?

I mentioned here, that I started running this summer. I am following a training schedule to help me reach my goal but it keeps changing the distance that I must run each day. Instead of guestimating (surely it's been a mile by now) or driving the route with the car (like I really feel like loading the kids another time) to try to calculate the distance, my wonderful husband, the engineer, found me an online application made using google maps that is a HUGE help! I simply go to google pedometer and type in the starting address and trace out on the map the path I want to run and it calculates the distance for me (along with calories burned).

I do all my running on roads but if you wanted to you can switch to satellite view and trace out your path through the woods or city park. My husband told me it could even overlay a topographical map but that was beyond my interest level. Today, I had to run 3 miles to stick with my schedule, and I was able to type in my address and plan a route that took me that exact distance (padded with some intentional cool down time at the end). It worked perfectly (though next time I will check the topography to avoid the hill)! The picture below is the graph it generated telling me the elevation change.

Pretty cool.

Stick around and check out my 100th post!! or, to find out what is working for other people, check out Rocks In My Dryer.