Jog mapping – the productive way of working out
Posted: May 20th, 2010 | Author: Guttorm Flatabø | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: jogging, Klæbu, mapping, openstreetmap, osm, utilitarian, working out, , | 9 Comments »Perhaps inspired by french barefoot jogger and entrepreneur Loic Le Meur, and the fact that during six weeks of travelling I only got to work out twice (and swimming in the shallow pools of The Flamingo doesn’t work that well), I started jogging every day last week.
My somewhat untraditional (or rather traditional?) leather running shoes
Having to attend my two last lectures of STS in Trondheim, I was stranded in the remote town of Klæbu. With six days of reading inbetween lectures, there was plenty of time for jogging. Thus, to not feel too alone I brought my newly acquired Holux m-241 GPS logger with me for my jogging trips.
The utilitarian that I am, my biggest problem with working out has always been that it’s not immediately productive. You only produce muscles and good health, and seemingly for no tangible purpose (I know there are many, the reason why I work out anyway). There are many ways to solve this problem. You can work out by chopping wood, carry things, cycle to work, etc. In Klæbu I found another way: Jog to make maps!
This is jog mapping (or map jogging): While working out is your primary goal, your secondary goal is to improve Openstreetmap. To do this you have to jog where Openstreetmap has poor coverage or needs improving, and you need to bring a GPS logging device. Now your jogging will have a real useful, tangible purpose, as it will help Openstreetmap improve!
At the same time you’ll really get to explore the area, and as you map it you’ll get familiar with all the paths and possible routes for your jogging. If you’re especially couragious and go jogging into peoples yards and gardens, you might also make som friends (and enemies). When you start running around houses and parking lots to log their location, you’ll eventually end up in the local newspaper too.
Luckily Openstreetmap wasn’t very well covered in Klæbu, so the Tuesday I arrived, the map looked something like this:
OpenStreetMap before jog mapping in Klæbu. (This screenshot has a different style than the following because it has been grabbed from Cloudmade.
And now, it looks like this:
OpenStreetMap after jog mapping for six days.
Oh, combining mapping with your daily life and social activities isn’t anything new, there’s always a mapping party!
I do the same thing on the mountain bike. I like that it gives your ride / jog a purpose and you are going to see new things every time. And after a while it turns into a puzzle, because you have to find the few track you have not mapped yet.
My blog post about it from last year: http://christof.damian.net/2009/09/new-hobby-openstreetmapping.html
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Jeremy B. Shapiro, larusalka. larusalka said: Jog mapping http://is.gd/chSRA (via @openstreetmap) -> I'd love to do some bike mapping, but I've got no GPS logging device 8^/ #opengeodata [...]
Such a nice cleaner of own head and if is it in Norway, even better effect. Running gets out wasted energy, stress and this amazing sport is drifting out substance called endorfin, something like feeling of pleasure :)
just enjoy! But take a rest, go to sauna and swim in the fjord also :)
Well, I did map allmost all of my hometown (Lessines) while jogging thru every street, a lot of wich where unknow to me so far …
It does give a goal to the exercice !µ
And it took me almost a year to complete.
Thank you for mapping here in Klæbu! :-)
I am impressed! Yesterday I ran (or rather ascended) 9 km following first a road and then track all the way up to a summer farm area. A little to much for my legs it seems today. Hopefully i wont be the only one doing this though, so I’m hoping it will take less than a year. We’ll see :)
Hi, i’m doing Map joging for 8 month now. I Map the “Schnaittachtal”. It go me going through the long Winter. I Finished the Hamburg Marathon in 3:29 because of so man detours while Mapping. My Area is very well mapped (almost each path) where I am able to reach within my training. I tag now offical hiking tours and POI.
How you organize your jog recordings?
I’m waiting for my sportwrist so I can wrap my smartphone (android) round my lower arm.
Will use OSM-Tracker to record und Maverick for orientation.
Hope it’s gonna work out.
I just record with my Holux m-241 GPS logger which fits nicely in my hand, extract it with gpsbabel, prepare for upload with viking and edit the map with potlatch. Not a very good process, espescially because gpsbabel doesn’t extract the track very well, so every startpoint of each track is displaced and all tracks are merged into one track.
I’ve tried OSMTracker for Android on my Samsung, but it’s very crude, and also need post-processing and uploading.