For a long time VeloViewer has had the option to export your activities as a KML file to then view in Google Earth but I always wanted to get the equivalent features embedded within the site. A recent discovery of the Cesium JavaScript library has made this possible and has opened the door to all kinds of interesting possibilities. Piloted recently on the Route Details page I’ve now rolled out this new “Earth” view to your activities and segments.
Category: Routes
Tour de France 2016 Stages
The 2016 Tour de France already feels a distant memory but I thought I’d share links to the routes for all of the stages. Due to my contract with Team Sky I don’t share these before the race but hopefully people will find some of them useful for both checking out the route and also checking out the old and new functionality of my Route Details page. Make sure you check out the Kinomap videos on the segments and also the “Earth” view.
| Stage/Date | Type | Distance | Elevation |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 – 02/07/2016
Mont-Saint-Michel / Utah Beach Sainte-Marie-du-Mont |
Stage | 187.8 km (+8.1 km) | 1,123 m |
| 2 – 03/07/2016
Saint-Lô / Cherbourg-en-Cotentin |
Stage | 182.7 km (+9.1 km) | 2,119 m |
| 3 – 04/07/2016
Granville / Angers |
Stage | 223.6 km (+6.0 km) | 1,984 m |
| 4 – 05/07/2016
Saumur / Limoges |
Stage | 236.3 km (+10.2 km) | 2,062 m |
| 5 – 06/07/2016
Limoges / Le Lioran |
Stage | 215.8 km (+6.3 km) | 3,964 m |
| 6 – 07/07/2016
Arpajon-sur-Cère / Montauban |
Stage | 190.6 km (+3.7 km) | 1,983 m |
| 7 – 08/07/2016
L’Isle-Jourdain / Lac de Payolle |
Stage | 162.2 km (+3.9 km) | 2,494 m |
| 8 – 09/07/2016
Pau / Bagnères-de-Luchon |
Stage | 183.1 km (+9.9 km) | 4,398 m |
| 9 – 10/07/2016
Vielha Val d’Aran / Andorre Arcalis |
Stage | 183.9 km (+3.8 km) | 4,622 m |
| 10 – 12/07/2016
Escaldes-Engordany / Revel |
Stage | 197.1 km (+2.8 km) | 2,263 m |
| 11 – 13/07/2016
Carcassonne / Montpellier |
Stage | 161.4 km (+6.7 km) | 1,432 m |
| 12 – 14/07/2016
Montpellier / Mont Ventoux |
Stage | 177.2 km (+18.7 km) | 2,446 m |
| 13 – 15/07/2016
Bourg-Saint-Andéol / La Caverne du Pont-d’Arc |
ITT | 37.4 km | 607 m |
| 14 – 16/07/2016
Montélimar / Villars-les-Dombes Parc des Oiseaux |
Stage | 207.6 km (+5.5 km) | 1,891 m |
| 15 – 17/07/2016
Bourg-en-Bresse / Culoz |
Stage | 159.6 km (+5.7 km) | 4,125 m |
| 16 – 18/07/2016
Moirans-en-Montagne / Berne |
Stage | 206.5 km (+8.6 km) | 1,991 m |
| 17 – 20/07/2016
Berne / Finhaut-Emosson |
Stage | 184.2 km (+8.2 km) | 3,825 m |
| 18 – 21/07/2016
Sallanches / Megève |
ITT | 16.8 km | 685 m |
| 19 – 22/07/2016
Albertville / Saint-Gervais Mont Blanc |
Stage | 145.2 km (+6.3 km) | 4,032 m |
| 20 – 23/07/2016
Megève / Morzine-Avoriaz |
Stage | 146.7 km (+2.8 km) | 3,683 m |
| 20 – Etape du Tour
Megève / Morzine-Avoriaz |
Stage | 124.1 km | 2,734 m |
| 21 – 24/07/2016
Chantilly / Paris Champs-Élysées |
Stage | 110.9 km (+15.0 km) | 808 m |
Rio Olympics Time Trial and Road Race Course Details (Men’s and Women’s)
The Rio Olympics’ road cycling events are set to be a real opportunity for the climbers with gradients approaching 20% on both the road race and time trial courses. I suppose the sprinters have got the World Road Race Championships in Doha to look forward to this year! (Update: now also includes triathlon bike loop)
Viewing GPX files in VeloViewer
Often events like sportives or races will provide GPX files of the course for you to upload to your GPS device, but I get lots of requests to be able to view those GPX files in VeloViewer in order to see 3D profiles, Google StreetView and other features of the VeloViewer Route Details page direct from these files. VeloViewer has two ways to do this, one is fast but slightly limited, the second is a bit more involved but provides all the features:
Mapped Gradient Colours and Google Street View for your Strava Activities, Routes & Segments
Although we’d all love to be out riding/running much more often, sometimes we’re stuck, looking at a computer, pretending to work. So to make that time as engaging as possible you can now reccy new routes, swot up on all the details of a segment or relive a ride/run from the past using the new/revised Google Street View integration on VeloViewer. Combine that with the new colour gradients shown on the maps and you get a fantastic way to explore the twists, turns, ups and downs.
Activity/Route/Segment Direction/Gradient Breakdown
A while ago I built a visualisation to display the orientation of roads in a defined area and had requests to have a similar view for activities. Well, two years on (I know!) and here it is, with the added breakdown by the gradient of the roads/trails. Just head to the “Breakdown” tab on any Activity, Route or Segment Details page. Filtering the selection in the top profile (Activity & Routes) updates the visualisation appropriately.
Embeddable Strava Route Interactive 3D Profiles
The ability to view your Strava Routes was recently added to VeloViewer and no sooner than it went live I had requests to be able to embed those route profiles and maps on people’s own blogs. In just the same way as you can add segments using the embed scripts you can now include a full route on your own site.
Strava Routes officially arrive in VeloViewer
VeloViewer has always been able to show you comprehensive views of your past rides and runs but plenty of people have asked to see similar views of routes they are planning to do. Fortunately Strava have just opened up their Routing API so now I can display all the routes you have created and allow you to see their full details including the interactive 3D profiles.
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3D Strava/Garmin Connect/Ride With GPS Courses, Activities, Routes and Segments
Back in July I had my first experience with bookmarklets when playing with Marc Durdin’s excellent bit of code that provides his funky elevation profiles for Activities and Segments right there, in amongst Strava’s own page contents. I might have been a bit naive but I just didn’t realise that this thing was so easy to do, so time for a quick play and see what I could come up with. First off I wanted to get an interactive 3D view of the new Strava Routes, the other thing that sprung to mind was to see if I could swap out the Google Maps view for the more detailed (at least here in the UK) Open Street/Cycle Maps which I’ll go into in my next blog post.