Planning our Saturday route and its timing took a fair bit of communicating with emails flying between four parties well into Friday evening. “R” wanted to run 8-9 miles and had to be home by 8:15 a.m. while “D” was to be out late Friday and requested a not-too-early start time. I questioned a plan that had the four of us running separately along routes which in an ideal world would see us converge. Four moving objects running along icy sidewalks in -9C seemed to me a formula for confusion and missed rendezvous points. Been there, done that and it is far too cold to risk the possibility of standing on a street corner, wondering if so and so is late or has already gone by and should we wait. I asserted that I would only go along with this plan if we were all running with cell phones.
With the help of Google’s Pedometer I drew up a new plan and thanks to a couple of Blackberries and an IPhone, consensus was achieved for this new route. “R” ran by my place, we ran to “D”s and then we ran to “J”s. From there we went to “R”‘s arriving at 8:15 a.m. on the dot, our most important mission accomplished, and so on, all done with all the waiting done, in the warmth our homes. One day, there will be an APP to figure out how to organize a group run minimizing time spent running alone, coming from disparate points and all with different mileage targets. Here is what each of us got out of this group run.
Lynn = 14 miles, 2 miles solo
R = 8.75 miles, 1.5 miles solo
D = 7 miles, company all the way
J = 6.75 miles, 0.9 miles solo
Recently, I was showing our roommate how to use Google Maps Pedometer and he immediately noticed a function that I had never used. Once you have calculated a route, you can turn on the calorie counter, input your weight and voila,1165 calories burned for 14 miles. Time to eat!
Mind, Motion & Matter 