One of my 5 children lives in Eastchester, NY just outside the Bronx.

David is my second born and he and his wife live half a mile from the Bronx Parkway Path next to the Crestwood Train station.

I love to run this path! It is so nice when cities have dedicated paths for walking/running/biking with minimal street crossing.

It allows you to run “straight” without a lot of annoying breaks that aren’t planned.

NYC is always a bit warmer and less snowy than Buffalo, so even in February the weather was nice for running most days. I was even in a short sleeve for one of the runs as the temp hit the 50’s.

It rained most of the day, except for a two-hour window when I was able to get in a 6-miler.

Dave flew in on Friday from Europe, so on Saturday we went out for  9 miles. He is running a half-marathon, so today was his long run.

We ran along almost the whole parkway, and it was cold but not breezy so it felt good. The path is much busier in the sections heading into the Bronx, but with very friendly people and dogs.

That evening we had about 4 or 5 inches of snowfall, so on Sunday we skipped the run since none of the sidewalks or the paths had been shoveled yet.

Dave left that evening, so I ran by myself on Monday. It was still snowy and icy, with no one else on the trail. There are some spots that are hilly, and I had to walk those or risk a fall since it was so slippery.

I get that most paths like that aren’t really maintained in the winter, but as a runner it is still frustrating to have to slow down because of the fear of falling.

Bronx Parkway

Using the Google Maps Measure Tool

One thing I’ve recently learned I could do easily in Google Maps is measure distance.

Sometimes when I’m running, I want to know where a good turnaround point would be. I will try to map it out and it ends up being kind of a guessing game.

But, if you just pick a spot on the map and scroll down there is a “measure distance” button. I know… “duh”, but this is new to me!

On my iPad if I drag the map, it will move the points and measure from point to point and add it up.

This has been such a great tool, especially if I am somewhere I am not familiar with.

To use the Google Maps Measure Tool on the actual Google website, you would right-click the point you are starting from and the “measure distance” choice comes up on the menu.

I guess this feature has been around since 2014. It’s been a fun tool to play around with.

How to Plan a Route

1. Pick a point on the map
2. Right-click the point and choose “measure distance”
3. Drag the tool down to the first point (end of a road, or wherever a straight line breaks)
4. Drag the tool from the first point to the second point, and Google Maps will cumulate the distance