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12-29-2009, 01:58 PM | |
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My virtual run across America, and a business idea.
So I'm getting over my little knee problem and have started running again, and I thought it'd be cool to plot my progress on a map of the U.S., running across the country. I've always thought it would be cool to walk across the U.S., but I can't figure out how to get my work done in that scenario, so this is my fallback.
And then I thought, "Hmm, this is a pretty good idea for a website. If I started a website, could I get enough people to sell some advertising and stuff and maybe make some money?" So I went out looking to see if it's already out there. The concept isn't overly innovative, so I see a fair amount of sites out there that talk about it, but they all seem to be pretty lame. Here's a map, print it, color in your progress with a crayon kind of stuff. What I'd like is a web site where you plot your progress and then see a google maps street view of your location, and then a virtual tour of towns that you walk through, and an atlas so you can pick your route as you go, and an interactive map so you can plot your route. That doesn't exist. Is there money in this? What's the revenue model? Any web designers out there who would want to collaborate on this? In my 15 minutes of looking, I found one web site that's actually kind of close, though it's still basic. http://exercise.lbl.gov/index.html is a federal government site, and they do the street view pictures, which is pretty cool, and the online log. However, they only give you one route, an inexplicable Yorktown, Virginia, to Florence, Oregon, route, and you can't vary from that. Also, you don't get local information along your route as far as I can tell. I signed up for it, though, since it's the best option out there, and am now 11 miles into my journey. I've left Yorktown and am now on this nice road about 2 miles from Williamsburg. Anyone else want to wander along? |
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12-29-2009, 03:16 PM | #16 |
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Oh, and my suggestion for the site would be to combine something like this with a powerful training log. People aren't going to want to log their mileage twice, so combining the mapping aspect with a useful log is important, IMO.
I use Runner's World log, but really I just picked it because it was the first place I looked for one. It does its job of tracking when I ran and how far, but a bit more statistical analysis would be cool. They obviously have places to enter date, distance and pace, but there are also boxes for weather type, temperature, time of day, amount of effort required, etc. But you have to do your own cross-referencing to get any worthwhile information. I'd like to click a button and see what my average pace is when it's 50 degrees and compare it to my average pace when it's 80, for example. There are sites that do that kind of thing, but I'm too lazy to transfer all of my data. Also, an easy creation of logs or progress bars to embed or link to (like for a CP signature or a Facebook update) would be awesome. I'm starting to get a little detailed, I suppose. |
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12-29-2009, 03:28 PM | #17 |
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I'll try to sign you both up as partners, but for some reason it's not letting me go to the "choose partners" tab. I'll try again after a restart.
Dang government low-bid work.
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12-29-2009, 03:34 PM | #18 |
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I made a team called ChiefsPlaneteers. Try and join the team!
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12-29-2009, 03:39 PM | #19 | |
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I ask because I average running about 10 miles a week on my treadmill and I did something to my knee a couple of weeks ago on a Bowflex. It's swollen in the back, cracks, pops, and every once in a while when I step it feels like it wants to give out. More annoying than anything but I've been resting it for about a week and am wondering when I should bite the bullet and have it looked at. I'm 49 btw and have never had a knee problem like this. Ticking me off and I'm getting lazy. |
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12-29-2009, 03:39 PM | #20 |
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For daily logging, I use my Garmin forerunner 405. It is awesome. tracks all useful stats and uploads it to my garmin connect website. You can even link your activities (splits and all) to social networking profiles, twitter, etc. Here was my activity for the KC marathon back in October. I HIGHLY recommend them to anyone doing any serious long distance running, hiking, walking, biking, canoeing.. whatever. But then again, I am a data junkie, so maybe it is just me http://connect.garmin.com/activity/16672187
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12-29-2009, 03:47 PM | #21 | |
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To be honest, I didn't even know this GarminConnect website existed. I'll have to give it a shot. |
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12-29-2009, 03:57 PM | #22 |
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Unless I'm missing something, I think you need to add us to the team. I can't seem to find anywhere to join a team. I put the team name in and clicked "create", assuming I would join or get an error, but it just let me create a new team with the same name.
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12-29-2009, 03:58 PM | #23 | |
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Just tedonitis for me. It had been bothering me, and then went from there to outright bad pain. I had to stop doing anything for about a month for it to go away. I have no idea what would've happened to yours. Swollen in the back?
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12-29-2009, 03:58 PM | #24 |
mmm sweet lemonade
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Honestly, I am not sure... although a great idea, this government website has the performance of a one legged donkey that fell out of an aids tree
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12-29-2009, 04:02 PM | #25 |
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Okay, I've got you guys as partners. I'm not sure what happens now, but we'll see. I didn't get any notification when you added me, so maybe running partners are invisible to each other?
And yeah, can you add us to the team? I tried to create a team with the same name to see if it would join me up, but I get an error that says "no teams defined".
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12-29-2009, 04:02 PM | #26 | |
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12-29-2009, 04:03 PM | #27 | |
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Yeah, my mile logging the past couple of days has gone really easy and the individual stuff like the maps and pictures. It seems like it's the partner stuff that's really doggy. Maybe once that stuff is set up it'll go easier.
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12-29-2009, 04:04 PM | #28 | |
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I bought a cheap brace for it and will give it another week to see what it does. Like I said more annoying than anything so its probably nothing. I was just looking for some cheap advice on when I should be worried about it. |
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12-29-2009, 04:05 PM | #29 | |
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12-29-2009, 04:08 PM | #30 |
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Oh, hey. If I go to the map and ask it to show me the teams, it shows two Chiefsplaneteers teams. I'm not sure what that means. I tried twice to create a team and got errors, so it could be mine showing up, or it could be rageumr's team showing up on at least one of them.
You're both showing up as my partners, too, both with 11 miles.
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