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Do you prefer to plan your routes or are you more spontaneous?
PatrickB
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Do you prefer to figure out where you're going to run before you leave your home, or do you just run wherever you feel like once you're out?
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always plan route & stick to it hardly ever cut a run short
Too much time spent matching my outfit to figure out a route
I always plan, but at half five in the morning I'm quite likely to get lost and/or forget where I was supposed to be going next, so new routes tend to be a bit freeform the first few times.
I live in SW London so the longer runs are definitely planned as I have to factor in things like how many busy roads I'll have to cross (so, for example, I will only take certain routes early on a Sunday morning when traffic is lightest).
Having said that, most of my runs are on my local common so I might add or detract laps depending on how I'm feeling, or if I'm feeling more energetic than expected, an easy run might turn into a tempo or progression run. I am not following a strict plan so I can be a little bit flexible in that regard.
BIB, i'm the same. I don't live in a busy area but if I go into the countryside I have to make sure whether the roads i'm going on are going to be busy or not. Like sticking to quiet B-roads
(I use this gag about twice a year.)
I hate running out and back routes, so I usually work out how far I want to run, then plot something to match it. But I have been known to go exploring if I spot a wee path heading off somewhere I've never been.
I'm very dull when it comes to routes as I have my tried and tested ones that I rarely deviate from. I'm lucky in that I have a nice, scenic, quiet, figure of eight loop starting from my house that I run on all the time. Once round the bottom loop is four miles, once round the whole thing (not the middle bit) is six miles. If I loop across the middle bit and do the figure of eight, it's (pleasingly) eight miles. Doing two laps of the top loop gives me ten miles. That's almost all of the road running I ever do and it means I don't have to think about where I'm going at all, I can just enjoy the scenery (it was absolutely beautiful on my early Sunday morning six miler) or concentrate on my pace.
I mostly plan my routes in advance, or have a rough idea where I will be going. On some of my longer marathon runs the route was flexible as I needed to be able to add a bit if I hadn't quite got up to distance.
I have certain routes that I know the distance of to get back to my house.
plan routes so I can tell someone where I am going....if i collapse somewhere they need a rough idea where to look for me