Military Health, military health and wellness, military physical fitness - Military Times

Map and share your running routes online

Got a favorite running loop that you want to tell us and your fellow readers about?

Now you can show us your favorite stretch of pavement or trail with a new mapping program available on the USA Track & Field association’s Web site.

The America’s Running Routes program, a mash-up that incorporates drawing tools with Google Maps, lets users map, measure and save their favorite running routes in a searchable database. Through that database, other runners can run a quick search for a new loop, rather than hopping in the car to do the distance calculation by odometer.

How does it work? You can search by distance, starting point, facility, city, state or USATF route rating (“gold,” “silver” and “bronze”) and pull up the ever-growing list of what’s been mapped and saved.

We ran a search for “Pentagon,” for example, and pulled up 20 matches for the area around that section of Arlington, Va. Among them: A 4 ½-mile out-and-back loop from the Pentagon to the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C., via the Memorial Bridge. The person who posted it describes this one as “great at sunrise.”

We built a map of one of our favorite routes in the Virginia suburbs, a 5.9-miler we’ve dubbed the “Lifelines Loop.” Mapping out and saving a route is quick and easy with the tools the site provides, allowing you to mark the start and finish point, along with any water stations you’ve set up.

If you’re not sure about the terrain on a route you’re mapping, you can look at a satellite image of the route along with the conventional map and an “elevation profile” feature shows you the hills and dips.

So now it’s your turn. We want to see your favorite running route. Map it and save it on the USATF site and then share the link with us. Be sure to tell us what to expect from the loop. One word of warning: Be patient with the site, as maps are sometimes slow to load.

If we get enough of your maps, we’ll save them on this site as an online archive.

And while you’re in our message boards, be sure to stop by the Marine Corps Marathon and Army Ten-Miler race boards and join the conversation there.