Ordnance Survey – Great Britain's national mapping agency

"Building a Personalised Path Network" by Tom Gibbs

31 October 2007

Have you ever tried researching all the coordinates for a route from a paper map and inputting them manually into your GPS receiver? It’s a very time-consuming and laborious process. Anquet eliminates all this. You can plot routes quickly, view your route card with the click of a mouse and build your own personal routes database.
 
Start with a complete route

To construct a really good personalised paths network I start with a complete route. I plan my new routes on Anquet. I track them whilst I’m out training. Anquet has a LiveTrack feature that I use in conjunction with Garmin Forerunner to track my routes. When I get back home I upload them into Anquet. I add complete routes to my paths network as I go.

Filling in the gaps

Then the next time I go out or am planning a training session in the same area I add any extra paths that I used and then join these to paths network with a waypoint. By treating the waypoints as hubs and the paths as spokes you can quite easily build a comprehensive path network.

Your personalised path network gets better

Over time planning a new training route is very quick because I've got a database of training routes already stored. I also add notes against each route for future reference, like a new personal best for the route, etc. This helps me monitor improvements in my performance.

Improving race times

I monitor performance by taking timing splits whilst I'm racing. For example, in road races this might be the time at each mile. In orienteering or adventure races this might be the time at each checkpoint. After the race I take my times and compare these against estimated times provided by Anquet at each stage of the race.

Improving decision-making

If I was finding it hard to decide on route options during the race, I'll use the route tools to see if I made the right choice or whether I should have gone the other way. So I'll plot out the actual route I took and also alternative routes that I might have taken. I then compare the relative distance, climb and times to see if I could have made better choices.

Building a personalised paths network

I live at the bottom of Wye Valley so we have a huge network of paths, tracks and roads to choose from. Building up my own personalised paths network in Anquet has taken time, but it's very important to my training.

For more information visit our Anquet product page or download Anquet software free.

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