Take Google Maps and add to that a tool that tells you "How far is it from point A to B." This is what the Gmaps Pedometer Mashup does. If you walk, run, bike or swim this is an excellent web tool for you. It's a Google Maps Mashup that lets you set up waypoints and it calculates the distance in miles as well as the number of calories you burn after you input your weight. The calories thing is obviously dependant to your pace also, but its a good approximation. Once you've created a route, you can save your route, use the elevation tool for hills and indicate where you want mile markers on your route.
Some Uses for this tool:
1. Rather then driving your car along the jogging route to estimate the distance, input your jog route into the Gmap Pedometer to see how far it is.
2. Estimate how many calories you might be burning with your run, jog, walk or swim. Not exact, but a good estimation.
3. Set up your cross-country team's runs on the map and publish it on the cross-country team's website as a resource.
4. Prepare for a marathon with the map links on your website showing the routes and distances.
Usage:
When you log into the site, you'll see the google map of the world starting with the U.S. Just like in Google Maps, drag or double-click to move the map, use the slider to zoom in our out and select Map, Satellite or Hybrid buttons to switch the type of imagery. You can enter an address, city or zip (just like in Google Maps) to pick a starting point.
Once you're ready to to record the distance you traveled (or will travel) click the start recording button. After that, each double-click will draw a point on the map and the distance from each point will accumulate and appear in the boxes above. Each double-click will create a new point.
When you have your route set, you can save the map and link to it from your site. You can also view a graph showing the elevation of each point plotted against distance (in Canada, UK and US). Another feature is the ability to print the completed map.
Examples:
Here's some sample pre-set courses in Ontario set up for a Half Iron man Simulation:
This has to be one of the most useful and well put-together Google Maps Mashups I've used. Check it out at Gmap-Pedometer.com 