Memorial Day Bike Ride
Posted in Personal Stuff by John E. Pannell on May 27th, 2008 at 12:02 am For those who don’t know me too well, I like to bicycle. I don’t have the physical stamina or level of fitness to race — and really aren’t that interested in it — but I do like to ride when I get a chance. Unfortunately I lost my riding companion when I lost my job last Winter, but that’s another story. Anyway…
I found this neat site for logging rides, www.mapmyrun.com. It appears to have been initially designed for runners, as the name would indicate but works well for cyclists, too. Using Google technology, it lets you map out your trips. You can also save them or share them with others. I just started using it, primarily as a way to alert folks where I’ll be riding as I ride alone. Registration is required to use most features, but that is free.
For the real patch geeks out there, I’m sure you can use this to plot your routes to trade-o-rees or travel plans between concurrent events. 
You can also post your route on a blog. After the break you can see the ride I took Monday afternoon.
This was the longest ride of the year for me. This site measures it at 26 miles. My bike odometer showed it to be about 0.4 miles longer. That could be due to a minor miscallibration of my odometer. It also could be due to an error in mapping my route. The site’s code measures straight line distances, so you need to enter well-placed intermediary points to deal with curves in roads. (The mathematically inclined, and those familiar with fractal geometry, will understand better. ) Still the error between the two measurements is not much more than 1%… acceptable for my purposes!
Here’s Monday’s route…
The first 18 miles were rough due to strong winds coming out the SW to WSW. I was smart to plan the ride ending with a long north bound stretch for when I was tired. All in all, it was a pleasurable ride.
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I hope you finished off at the Steak and Shake for a nice reward!
Man, I really need to start a regular exercise regimen.
I just finished my undergraduate studies, so now I don’t really have much of an excuse.
[...] other day, John Pannell pointed out a site he used to plan his Bike ride. He also mentioned that the site could be used for other purposes including trips to TOR’s [...]