3-D Course Creator, Plan your next workout

Our ace programming whiz, Brad Culberson has created a very handy, cool and fun utility called the Course Creator. Essentially, it's a tool that lets you trace a route using Google maps, then it will calculate accurate elevations for every point, and finally provide you several export options so you can use the course with a Garmin Forerunner/Edge GPS device.

It uses some very cool new web technology that we are working with called "Flex", from Adobe... and a back-end technology called Rails... and he's built it with various map services like Microsoft Virtual Earth, Google Maps and Yahoo Maps.

A really cool feature is that you can Export in several formats as shown below. This way you can use the course you created in your next workout, check out the profile of an upcoming race, build a CompuTrainer course and ride it indoors, or just play around with the course in Google Earth.

One of the most powerful features is an elevation service that Brad has designed which provides elevation data for any point you plot on the route. Using over 80 gigabytes of terrain data, you have worldwide access to accurate profile information, no trivial matter.

This has been a side project of Brad's, but look for this technology to creep its way into TrainingPeaks.com and CyclingPeaks products in the near future.

Enjoy!