Using wandrer.earth to motivate your discovery of new trails, not just log miles
This blog is about finding new places to run, especially ultrarunning destinations. As such, I’m glad I came across a new website this week, wandrer.earth that tracks unique miles you’ve run all over the world. It integrates with Strava and then presents your running data in an alternative view by keeping track of how many unique miles you’ve run, not just how far you’ve run. By aggregating all of your running data and presenting it visually, it’s a great way to see where you haven’t run locally and globally.
Despite logging nearly 1,000 miles (1600km) this year, wandrer.earth’s metrics reinforced what I already knew, a significant portion of these miles were on just a few of my favorite routes. It’s easy to fall into a familiar routine, but with one glance at the Big Map view for my town, it was clear there are so many other routes I could take but never have.
Wandrer.earth is a great tool to help set new goals to venture beyond my usual routes, both locally and globally. With 19 US states and six European countries still unchecked on my running list, the platform offers the perfect incentive to find and run new routes.
The competitive aspect of wandrer.earth adds a fun twist to this exploration. The dashboard view can be set at nearly every level between the entire earth and the town where you run the most. As of December 2023, my rankings stand as follows:
Global: 442nd out of 80,808 runners, and ranked 10th by Countries visited
United States: 405th out of 27,996 runners, and ranked 23rd by States visited
United States / Ohio: 41st out of 2,871 runners
Ohio / Franklin County: 10th out of 786 runners
Ohio / Columbus: 14th out of 700 runners
Europe: 721st out of 55,797 runners
Europe / Germany: 879th out of 22,479 runners
Germany / Berlin: 77th out of 4,553 runners
Europe / Sweden: 154th out of 4,037 runners
Sweden / Stockholm: 59th out of 1,701 runners
Wandrer.earth is more than just a tracking tool; it's a source of motivation, a challenge to explore, while making it fun through gamification. I’m looking forward to using it in 2024 to increase the diversity of trails I explore and also motivate me to explore additional states and countries to improve my rankings! Give it a try and see what adventures it helps you find!
