I mentioned in my previous blog post about Running With Kids that GPS Art is a great way to make running fun, especially for kids.
After running across this suggestion while writing that article, I decided I wanted to implement it into my running nights with my little girl. I pulled up a google map of our neighborhood to see what kind of animals, shapes, or interesting things we could create…and I stared, and I stared, and I stared. I saw nothing. Typically I am a fairly creative person; I’m a writer, I love photography, I crochet, I enjoy cake decorating….but when I stared at the curves and blocks in the roads, all I could think was “we could run back and forth a few times and call it a snake! Or maybe…run this triangle and call it a candy corn.” 😐 At that point I figured, heck, GPS art is kind of a big thing these days, there has got to be an app for it! Yeah…shockingly enough, there is not an app for that. At least, not a decent one.
My Idea For A GPS Art App
This disappointing realization lead my wandering mind to brainstorm. How cool would it be to have an app that you could simply say “I want to run __ number of miles today.” It would lock onto your GPS location and start your run. During the run, much like a navigation system for the car, the app would tell you to turn right on such and such street, or turn left at the next turn, etc. Once you had completed the set number of miles you wanted to run you could look at the GPS map and see what art it had you create!
I think this app would not only be fun because it makes GPS art easy to do, but it would also encourage you to complete as many miles as you stated at the beginning that you were going to run, since, if you don’t complete the miles, the art doesn’t get completed either.