MapDiscovery gets into shape. I am working on it as an easy way to locate yourself on this planet, and to set a starting point in TrailRunner. Instead of the all so popular GoogleEarth digital orthophoto (DOQ) MapDiscovery is specialized on finding topographic maps available from open WMS Servers. Especially the USGS Topo Maps and the Maps from Catalonia and Germany are such great sources with a detail, most can not imagine if haven't seen yet. So for this and other reasons this small application lets you browse around the globe and inspect the best known map sources I know of. > Download MapDiscovery

TrailRunner goes into the next evolutionary round. The upcoming version includes MapDiscovery to easily spot the point to start from. Hopefully this will make things much less complicated (as long as map coverage for the area you dwell in is good enough).
And this is how it works: Open an new document, select File > New Location. MapDiscovery will open up. Zoom into the location you want to start from and set the location. Now TrailRunner will ask you to download maps for an approximate area of 10 square kilometers. This will take a while but after that your are "up and running". Map Sources available cover: USA, Canada, Catalonia (Spain), Bavaria/NRW/Hessen (Germany), Oberösterreich, and more to come.
Happy Season.
Download the TrailRunner 1.3 Beta

I am happy to announce that I finally got the GeoServer of Nordrhein-Westfalen integrated as a download source. This will open up a very detailed map coverage for the state in Germany with the highest population. To achieve this, I integrated a great package named proj.4 which is simply a framework to transform coordinate systems from one to another. In this case TrailRunner requires the WGS84 Spatial Reference System EPSG:4326 but the WMS Server of NRW only understands the Gauß-Krüger Reference System EPSG:31466, which is very common in Europe. But even though I can transform points from one coordinate system to another, I still have to rotate each map tile I get back from the server. Mostly by 1.06 degrees. And additionally I have to stretch and bulge the tiles horizontally and vertically to get a perfect overlay with the tiles in the neighborhood. Somehow I have the impression that the WMS server does something weird internally and this is the reason why they are unable to provide the EPSG:4326 projection by default. If someone of my honored readers has any deeper knowledge about what could be going on here, please drop me a line. I would be very thankful to discuss this topic and to find an appropriate solution. The quality, the server can deliver, is really worth the effort.
> PROJ.4 - Cartographic Projections Library

In the december 2006 issue of french SVM Mac magazine TrailRunner is being reviewed on page 98. It's a short description on what the application does and for whom it is useful. "TrailRunner se révèle un outil sophistiqué pour l'entraînement sportif e la préparation de parcours".
June 2006 issue of UK MacFormat magazine published a two page how two get directions from your iPod. "Create maps and route plans, then transfer them to your iPod wit this ingenious piece of software". Pages 62 and 63.
October 2006 issue of the german MacLife magazine wrote a News & Trends article about TralRunner and GPS Photo linker. The article is called "Rennende GPS-Fotografen" (running GPS photographers). Page 13.
Frebruary 2006 issue of german c't magazine noted TrailRunner in its New for Mac section. Page 54 announces the new iPod Nano and below an Article about TrailRunner. "Mit TrailRunner kann man seine Laufstrecken planen".

Tags: press

One recent WMS discovery will extend the TrailRunner maps download by maps from Catalunya (Spain). The Institut Cartografic de Catalunya (ICC) provides maps in various resolutions, down to 1:5000. This is by far (yet) the best map source I know of.
If you know other open WMS Servers with good material, please drop me a line.

TrailRunner today got a special mention as "meilleure utilisation des technologies Apple" (Best usage of Apple technologies) in the MacGeneration Award 2006.
Read about the winners and the mention:
Français Original
MacNews German

This also is a big thank you to all contributors of feedback and new ideas. Even if we hardly speak the same languages.

Tags: press

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What you see in the two pictures below is the very same location. In the greater perspective, the topographic TK20 map is absolutely perfect for hiking and route planning. And next, a small keyhole into GoogleMaps at zoom-level 1.
Although the resolution of the satellite images are perfectly fine, it's an overload of information. If you layout a route in the topographic map, it's possible to work in a wide aspect and still find the trails you want. With the satellite imagery, you can pin down to footsteps, but working in high zoom can be very tedious, as you often loose the overall point of view.
The moral: as ever, less is often more.

I must admit that the United States Geological Survey (USGS) is more and more getting my best friend. The scientific agency of the United States government offers many web-based services providing geographical data of the United States and partly about the rest of the world.
The newest discovery is the elevation database. Thanks to the pointer from Mike Jacobsen, TrailRunner now can query the online-database for every single point in your TrailRunner document and will receive the corresponding elevation. Best of all: It seems to cover the whole planet.
To download elevation data for you net of tracks you need a calibrated document. The menu command File > Import > Elevation data from Internet-Service will start the download. As it takes long, you might also check out the same locations in the fresh air, while the download is proceeding.

TrailRunner can now import the last workout from your Nike + iPod Sports Kit. For that a new Toolbar-Button is available under View > Customize Toolbar.
The import process is straight forward. You connect your iPod Nano to your Mac. Press the toolbar import button (or File > Import > From Nike + iPod Sport Kit) and a sheet with the last workout data will come up. Optionally select the corresponding route in the list of routes (or create a new one) and press the Add button. Now the diary will come up, containing the new entry. Have fun with this one. If you happen to have problems with the import, please contact me as reading the data off the iPod Nano is done by a hack that might fail.

Tags: import, diary, Apple + Nike iPod Sport Kit, Nike+ SportBand, Nikeplus

TrailRunner 1.1 features an improved diary. In short it's about search, flag and compare.

Chart
In the new toolbar, switch the area above the entries table to display either calendar based data entry fields or a comparison chart.
The chart reflects the current selection in the diary table, displaying at least 10 weeks from the newest selected entry backwards. If you select more entries in the table, the cart will update to the new entries range.
Entries will always display as a grouped value based on the current interval. The base interval is by weeks and can extend to months if you select a big amount of entries.
In the legend on the right you see the overall values for the displayed data. If you need to know the data for one data-point, select it and you'll see the specific values in the lower legend.

Fitness
The fitness is a calculated value based on pace and heart-rate. The main idea is that if you where very fast with a low heart-rate, you're fitter. In the opposite if you where very slow and had a high heart-rate, you're less. This value is just an orientation and does not have the accuracy of the methods used in Polar watches or other bio-medical methods, but it gives a pretty good overall impression.
The scale of the values is in the value range of the polar watches, but that's only a nice coincidence.

Flag
As you are accustomed from Mail.app, entries can now be flagged in the leftmost column. If you start a series of exercises to reach a certain goal, flag the first one. If you had a very nice exercise or competition, flag it.

Search
The search field in the lower right corner will search for diary entries (looks into column route and personal notes) that contain the given search term. The diary table will then only display matching entries.
This provides various ways to tag and filter diary entries, to later compare entries of the same class. Some examples:
To find out how many kilometers you have accomplished with a pair of shoes, tag all entries with a unique tag like xasc06 (your Asics 2006 pair). When you later search for that term the chart legend will display the values you want to know: number of units and sum of kilometers.
To compare your performance in a certain route over time, enter the routes name and the chart will display the performance values.
To make a distinction between running and biking, tag all runs with xrun and all biking exercises with xmtb. Later search for either tag to see a chart with values only of this kind.
If you use a polar watch and regularly measure your OwnIndex, enter the OwnIndex in the personal comment like ownindex:52. Later search for ownindex and see you progress on the measure checkpoints (unfortunately not in the chart but filtered on entries with this information)

Export
Not a new feature but a good place to mention, if you select diary entries, edit > copy will put them as tab separated columns into the clipboard. An easy method to transfer entries into Excel or other analysis tools.

Tags: diary

You might have read the press-announcements for Nike and Apple creating a new extension to the iPod Line. It's a piece of Hardware, basically a smart pedometer inside your shoe and a software update for your iPod Nano. The software tracks the usual data like time and distance and includes some kind of voice comments. Additionally Apple offers a new set of workout playlists in iTunes for your training and inspiration.
The software update for the Nano will include a new menu item, "Nike+iPod," which allows you to choose your workout distance and select your playlist.
Even if it's cool to hear some motivating tunes during your workout, how do you know what the 5 miles course is? It's clear: TrailRunner is the next perfect addition. Could someone please tell Apple and Nike?

Even though I should know everything in the application, I do not understand a single word here. In a fascinating fast effort, a very fond user from Taiwan localized TrailRunner to Traditional Chinese and this is how it looks like. Thanks Nitoc. BTW: Currently TrailRunner is available in English, German and Traditional Chinese. If you are interested in localizing TrailRunner to French, Spanish, Portuguese or Japanese, please drop me a line. All you need is a Text-Editor. It's not that complicated and it will make things less complicated for others.
> nitoc@blogspot

TrailRunner can now download map images from the internet. Main-USA, Hawaii and Alaska have a good quality as they are based on topographic maps from the 60´s. Unfortunately the rest of the world is only covered (yet) with low to mid quality Nasa satellite imagery.
The current implementation is a proof of concept so you might want to try it out and tell me if it is of any use to you. It might make sense if you happen to get a GPX file from somewhere or if you imported some data from your GPS Device and want to look at the geographical region the route is in.
But I expect more map-servers popping up in the near future. There are already some nice ones for Germany but they only support local coordinate projections — to much work to implement a support in TrailRunner yet.
If you have any feedback or some pointers where I could find other servers to include, please drop me a line. For the technically interested, the known services directory can be found in the MapServices.plist inside the Application Package.

And this is how it works for mere mortals: Import any GPX into an empty document or take a calibrated one. Under File > Import you'll find a new menu item to download the map data.

Have fun, patience and a fast internet-connection.

Tags: Maps

TrailRunner gets more open and is now a team-player with a partner application called LoadMyTracks from cluetrust. This means you are now able to download your tracks from any GPS device, especially the Garmin ForeRunner series. And this is how it works:
First off, you need a calibrated map. Then, connect your GPS unit to your Mac by using one of the recommended methods. Visits the cluetrust website to get more information on that.
Then, go to File > Import > Data from GPS unit.
Now LoadMyTracks will fire up and will download all tracks from your GPS unit. When done, TrailRunner comes up again, asking you what tracks you'd like to import.
The Import can be done in two ways. Import course as one piece or Import and merge tracks. Import course as one piece just imports the track as it is. The good thing about this option is: it doesn't alter or harm your existing tracks. The bad thing about this is that the new track lays on top of any of your existing tracks in the map and has like no connections to the rest. But if you want to extend your net of tracks, and add new crossings and track courses, then you need to use the Import and merge tracks option. TrailRunner then tries to find as much similarities of the new track to your existing ones and will only add courses that are new to your map. Due to the very complex nature of the merging algorithm and sometimes poorly collected data by the GPS unit, this might not always give you results that 100% satisfies you.
At times, you will get tracks that have a course parallel to an existing track but TrailRunner did not recognize that they ought to be the same. When this happens, select the track you would call the master-track — the track you want to keep — and then select File > Consolidate > Merge onto selected track. All tracks that are parallel to the selected one are then reduced onto the master-track.
Please note that all these operations are very complex and therefore I can't give you undo (yet). So you better keep a save backup.
> LoadMyTracks | TrailRunner

TrailRunner NanoMaps have been redesigned a bit to match more the visual appearance of Apple iPod designs.

From the original post: After struggling very long on how to describe a route in a very compact and portable way without using expensive GPS-Units which – if running trough the woods – wouldn't really do it anyway, I now added this kind of export. So if you are the lucky owner of the all so cool iPod Nano, this feature really is the best way to stay on track. With NanoMaps every waypoint on your route is displayed with a snap-shot of the map-area around it. Additionally the map is rotated in a way that the direction you are coming from is always at the lower edge of the screen. The orange arrow then shows you the direction you should turn to. The biggest benefit now is, that even if you did not put every possible track into your map you can still see that there are other tracks at a crossing. Because it is not possible to have subfolders in the nano Photo-Library, green squares with a readable route-code in the overview mode help you to find the route you are looking for.
So buy a nano, download some Podcasts, export your NanoMap and have fun with your exercise…

What you see above is the TrailRunner Route export as a KML file, opened in Google Earth. Unfortunately Google Earth is very inaccurate for any elevation-data. So sometimes tracks seem to float above the ground. But it's fun anyway. Especially to to follow the track in a birds eye view animation.
> Google Earth Download

TrailRunner has undergone a rewrite of its internal data structure. Before v70 only way-points where able to store elevation information. This changed. Now the first fruit of this effort has come up. An elevation chart for the route description window. The elevation chart is fully interactive, so you can click and drag the selection marker to inspect the course of your route. On the left side you see a small nano-map of the current way-point giving you directions in what direction to turn. It's the same nano-map you can export on your iPod or cellphone. So the new route description window is a good precheck before you leave the house.

Just for those being curious how a big TrailRunner map could look like. Here's a screenshot of my personal map in Frankfurt, Germany. One of the maps I regularly run in (The other one depicted in the screenshots elsewhere is for the Taunus area, a small hillside near to Frankfurt.)
As you can see, there are several "hot-spots" where many tracks and points cluster. Typically these are park-areas with nice route combinations to run in. Other tracks are just for connecting hot-spots for longer runs during a marathon preparation. In the south you see a route-area I sometimes cover when I'm running after work.
So this might inspire you to build your own, very complicated net of tracks, and TrailRunner can help you to make it easy to handle.

The TrailRunner exercise plan is based on a 3 week cycle. The cycle starts with a normal week, followed by a more intensive week and closing with a regeneration week. After this phase the overall intensity is increased by an individual factor like 5% and a new cycle starts.
The intensity itself is the distance in kilometers or miles. Please note, that the TrailRunner exercise plan is a base-plan, so the average heart-rate you should have during the workouts should be in your aerobic metabolism zone. How much you like to increase from cycle to cycle is something you can plan in advance. But an average from 1% to 5% would be appropriate.
What happens here is the following: You set yourself small goals, reach them, breathe a sigh of relief and set the next small goal. Step by step you'll increase the distances you can accomplish and TrailRunners route calculation will help you find the appropriate courses. The following example illustrates this:

• Say in the first week you would start off with a distance of 10 Kilometers.
• Then the following week is a intensive week. This means the distance is increased by 20% to 12 km
• The next week is a recreation weak, with a reduced distance by 20%, so it's 8 km.
• Now the cycle is finished and we head into the next phase. The base value of 10 km is now increased by the factor you planned before, say its 5%.
• So the first week would start off with 10,5 km
• The following week with 12,6 km
• And so on. Over the a longer period of time the distances will increase like shown in the chart.

This said, you need to plan every unit per week. Add as many units to the Exercise Plan tab you would like to accomplish per week. Say you might want to have two units per week, you could call the first unit the "during the week unit" and the second the weekend-unit. The increase level for both units could be different. During week might increase by 1% and weekend by 5%.
The Exercise Calendar Tab then shows the concrete distance for one week. When the plan starts, something you set in the Exercise Plan with a given start date, you can add week by week and TrailRunner will calculate the values for you, following the rules given above.
Note: If you plan to use an adaptive exercise plan, that increases by the real values you have accomplished, then do not add all possible weeks in advance. After you have completed a week you can adjust the values of the given kilometers or miles by the real values you have accomplished. Then as you add a new week, the rules will take the changed values into account. For example if you did not make the base value of 16 kilometers but only 14, TrailRunner will not add 5% to the 16 Kilometers but to the 14.
The Exercise Calendar has two Buttons: Find Route and Apply. Find route takes the value of the selected workout unit and starts a find route for the given value in the main window. Apply will take the distance value of a selected route and replace the value of the selected workout unit by that. So the two buttons are something like the in and out of the exercise plan.
The third tab Event Calendar is very simple: Add event dates to it and track how many weeks are still left until the event will happen.

If you live in the US you might want to check out topozone. It delivers the Web's most complete set of digital topographic maps, aerial photographs, and related mapping information to the professional and outdoor recreation communities.
The Web-Service tool combines all available USGS topographic maps in one Interface. Maps scale down to 1:25000 and have topographic altitude information drawn in.
The USGS (U.S. Geological Survey) serves the US by providing reliable scientific information to describe and understand the Earth.

TrailRunners View Menu now has a direct link to topozone. So if you select a calibrated waypoint, you can check out what map data is available at topozone. The example above depicts the Central Park in New York.
> New York Central Park at topozone

The TrailRunner Diary has improved, The new version can now be exported as a Weblog. For that you can enter a public comment on a route in the above field, together with a picture and a private note in the bottom field (if you can read any german you will notice this note above being very private). Together with your weblog entries, a route description is also being published as a gpx-file. This enables other users to find routes from other TrailRunners.
Currently the weblog can only be exported to an FTP Server. If you do not like the design of the default weblog, the template is based on RapidWeaver from RealMac, so you can choose any RapidWeaver compatible theme for your personal weblog.

Tags: weblog, diary

Do you still remember Sherlock, the internet service tool inside your Applications Folder? Well it's still there and it contains a little forgotten gem for all TrailRunners living in California.
AboveCalifornia is a Website and Webservice for Sherlock that features hiking maps for California mountains, campgrounds, ranger stations, lakes, trails and parks. You can also search pictures taken by hikers and even view some VR panoramas and Information from local weather stations.
> AboveCalifornia.com
Disclaimer: Do not steal. If you find any maps featured here useful, buy them.