What you probably do not know if you are not a runner

Okay, you probably know what GPS is. You are likely to have used it to find your way from point A to point B. It's an app on your phone or device in your car that uses satellites to figure out where you are. You turn it on and it figures out where you are using satellites and you enter a location and it uses maps to tell you how to get there.

Runners and other athletes use this technology differently. Instead of being told how to get somewhere we use the data to review where we have been and how fast we've been going. We also can use it in real time to see how fast we are going. So after a run you can download your data and see your pace, changes in altitude how these hills might of affected your run and it even draws you a map.

Some runners realized that you don't have to run from point A to point B or repetitive loops of a park. You can run in a predetermined way so that your map gets interesting. My friend Linus took this to the next level. He calls it GPS art, route art, or as he coined it, gwriting.  Check out his continually growing album here.

He can turn exercise into art about exercising

Or, send a greeting to a special friend. Please take a moment to notice how much work and planning line is put into this.. He's rounding certain corners and turning his GPS on and off to draw lines through streets

You can take it to the next level and make it a group activity.

You can get really crazy

But is the thing. If you want to have a lot of fun you can make it an event. For Hanukkah, Linus took a hard look at the streets of New York City and found an appropriate place to draw a menorah. So we carpooled and ran to Rego Park Queens where we got some strange looks from the residents and ran in the shape of a menorah.


Yep, we did that. Click below for the video of it's production

Since it was about 35° and I didn't want to make my teammates wait around for me to finish running all the crescents I just did an out and back. I went old school here and re-created my route on Google Pedometer. My friend Jimmy so perfectly pointed out that my route art was a Festivus pole