The collective mapped GPS data of untold thousands of running routes is put into a visual display in this experiment by the blog FlowingData.
In the post “Where People Run” major American and international population areas are swished in purple lines that represent the most popular circuits for running in each of the cities.
(Side note: If you dig this kind of beautiful data like we do, see our “Rivers of America Revealed in Fine Detail on new Vector Map” post from last year.)
My main training route is the thick purple line looping Lake Calhoun in Minneapolis on the graphic below. It’s among the most popular in the city, according to this quick glance.
All of the cities, 22 in total in the FlowingData post, feature routes culled via the RunKeeper app, which uses GPS to track training runs.
If there’s one quick takeaway, wrote the author, it’s that “people like to run by the water and in parks, probably to get away from cars and [for the] the scenery.”
Click to find the cities and see, via the thick purple lines, where people train and run the most in your home town. —Stephen Regenold
—See all the cities and running routes in this experiment at the blog FlowingData.
