USA Running Heat Map

While looking at my long run details on Garmin Connect, I noticed the local heat map. I zoomed out and saw the Boston area heat map.

I started looking at different areas and found that the running heat really drops off north of Boston. Nothing shows up in Portland, Bangor, Manchester or Burlington.

Then I looked at the map below and found it very interesting. I’ve always loved maps, and this one was insightful about running.

Boston, New York and Chicago seem to be the hottest areas for runners based on this map. The red area indicates a higher level of activity. Green and blue indicate lower levels of activity.

It makes sense that higher levels of activity would be concentrated in urban areas with a high population concentration.

When you zoom in on one of these urban areas you see that certain routes tend to have a lot of the activity. In Boston the Esplanade is red and orange and high levels of activity continue out to Watertown.

Part of the Boston Marathon course through Newton and down Beacon Street are green and blue. Not a huge amount of traffic, but 99% of the roads on the map have no activity or too little to be measured.

In Wakefield the 5K around Lake Quannapowitt is only blue. I spend a fair amount of time running “Lake Q” and I am familiar with the amount of traffic the lake sees. There is a 5K there every Wednesday evening with 50-75 runners. Often on weekends there are other races around the lake.

Knowing how much traffic Lake Q sees gives me a pretty good idea of how much activity is taking place in those areas that are covered in red on these maps.

While not everyone wears a Garmin, many runners do. This analysis may not stand up to the rigors of scientific scrutiny, but I think these heat maps are a pretty good indication of USA running activity.

MapMyRun and Run Keeper have similar maps, though it has been a while since I looked at them.

Do you ever look at these types of maps? I wonder how many runs down a particular road it takes before that route shows up on these maps?

Run well my friends,

Andy