In Lockdown With Bella #5

Posted in News on May 17, 2020

In Lockdown With Bella is a series of blogs from members of Bellahouston Harriers aimed at providing an insight into running life during the coronavirus pandemic.

Four other blogs are already on the website.

In this blog entry, Becky Simister explains the inspiration behind heat mapping members' lockdown running.


By Becky Simister

As lockdown measures continue, I started my quest to create a heat map based on all my running through lockdown. Running solo at home provided a change to my club training and racing most weekends. Living in the sticks presented me with challenges and questions - how far could I run out of Strathaven? Were there any flat routes hidden amongst these hills? (The answer was evidently no).

A heat map illustrates the runner's playground. As I work with maps, I eagerly exported my .gpx files to see how far and where I ran, and felt some joy in its' visual representation. I asked other Harriers to contribute their runs to a much larger heat map - it covers the west of Scotland and even as far across the border as Stafford. From 126 activities from over 20 runners in one week, you can see our runners are based far and wide across the Greater Glasgow area, with predictable hotspots around Pollok Park, Queens Park and our usual training routes.

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It made me smile thinking that whilst we all run solo at the moment, we still run the same streets and go out to train, just not at the same time. It's a nice moment when your runs with other Bellas overlap.

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