Nicole and I have been trying to get out and do some walking. There really isn’t a neighborhood in the traditional sense in our immediate area (read: with out driving) so we started walking around our apartment complex. It’s a fairly decent walk and we have been doing laps. The other night we decided to maximize the length of each lap by walking a figure 8 pattern. (You can see what I mean in the photo below.) We had been taking guesses as to what the actual distance of our laps were. My guess was 1/4 -1/2 mile… Nicole said about 1/2 mile.
So tonight I went out with our GPS and created a track. A track is basically a series of points that the GPS records, at whatever interval you tell it to, and then it strings them all together in to a track. It’s kind of like dropping very precise digital bread crumbs along your route. I set the GPS to record a point every 10 seconds in the hopes that it would give me the level of detail I wanted.
When I got back to the apartment I downloaded the track data to the computer and uploaded it to GPSVisualizer.com. I told GPSVisualizer.com to overlay the track on a Google map the image above is the result with a little cropping. I ran what they call a profile which shows you distance and elevation changes.
The distance measured by the GPS was 0.73 miles. I think it’s safe to call that 3/4 of a mile. D0 4 laps and you’ve just taken a nice 3 mile walk. We might have to work up to that.
– Jeremy
Hey Jeremy,
I see you are truly enjoying living in Austin??? I am up that way almost every other weekend (Round Rock). Hopefully I’ll finally be able to meet you and Nicle as summer approaches. Keep Moving!