runners - how do you plan your longer routes?

[Mitchy1nge]

I rely too much on either finding other people to run with or using the same bridleways and fields I ride on. Obviously is not always easy to find someone who fancies a ten mile run at exactly the time I need/want to go (although have been really lucky thus far) and the off road trails are becoming a bit shit in the dark/wind/rain being peppered with rabbit holes and tree roots and other hazards invisible in winter gloom.

oh I've just realised Garmin connect has about a thousand routes saved by other users so I really don't have to do any thinking at all, just map reading

I get out my OS map.

I use the website: Map My Run. You can try mapping lots of routes on there.

I like to either just discover new routes or looking at google maps. I live in the city centre and know all the big roads into and out of it, as well as the footpaths, so I just explore and experiement, or I will run to a specific village on the outskirts of the city, following a route one might drive.

I like sometimes just running and going wherever I fancy, but I know the layout of my city very well so can plan in my head whereabouts I want to go and whether I can make it a circular route or a straight there and back route.

Map my run is really good too, if I want to check the exact distance of a possible new route.

I tend to stick to the same routes tbh. I have a few trails and a paved byway which I alternate depending on the weather conditions and my stamina!

The OS maps are good for marking out alternative routes but when I first started out, I had a tendency to get lost

The walk jog run app is good for ideas too, I generally have an idea of long routes, and 9 times out of 10 someone on there has already mapped it for me.

Keep it under yor hat, but I make a colour photocopy of the relevancy map section and take it with me. Also now trying to link up 2 shorter runs into 1 longer one. Have put OS app/membership on mt Christmas list, as Mapmyrun only shows roads (or at least the freebie version does). If the paid up ones does footpaths etc I'd happily pay up.

Oops, relevant, not relevancy!

thanks all

have a bit of a fear of traffic and can run in a group or with at least one other highly visible person on the roads but alone yikes no and even in a group the whole of my upper body is in a vice-like grip of panic whether there are any cars or not

we can't run far before it's just roads without footpaths, really, a mile or two in any direction. I will study walkjogrun routes again though, it's not always clear where people actually go, sometimes it looks like they are running along a dual carriageway but there must be an invisible bridleway or something