Routegadget is a great tool for analysing your route choices compared to other runners. After an event the organiser uploads the map, the straight-line courses and the results to the RG2 server. Competitors can then go in and, without adding any more info, simply view selected routes and animate them in real time or speeded up against each other. To do this

1. Go to LVO Routegadget and select your event
2. Click on the Results tab then select the course you want to see
3. Check the Show Course box to the Right of the course name to see the purple straight-line course
4. Scroll down the results list and check the box to the right hand side of the people you are interested in
5. This will put them on the map and pop up a Play/Pause fast/slow box in the corner of the map
6. Use these control to “run” the people along the map in relative time. N.B. they only follow the straight line courses and the times are averaged across each leg
7. HOWEVER, if someone has drawn their actual route or uploaded their GPS plot then you will see their name listed again with two check boxes
8. If you check both boxes you can now run them along their actual route
9. For hand drawn plots the time is averaged between the controls but for GPS plots the time is accurately plotted as recorded by the watch
10. You can zoom in on the action and drag the map around for bets view of the interesting bits
11. N.B. Unfortunately, if you are hand drawing your route, Routegadget doesn’t handle free order sections if they aren’t in the default order provided. Sorry about this. GPS plots work fine as RG just runs it as given.

The default straight line routes don’t tell you a lot so you can have even more fun if you draw your actual route or, better still, upload your GPS watch file for second by second accuracy.

To Draw your Route

• Pick your event and click on the Draw tab
• Select your Course and then select your Name
• Now click on the map some short distance along your actual route from the Start to the first control (shown red) to draw your first section – shown as a red line
• Repeat this in short steps along the route until you get to the first control at which point that the control circle changes colour to purple and the next control goes red
• Keep clicking along the route with as much detail as you can be bother with. Tip: don’t go crazy with points along the straights
• If you make a mistake click the Undo button
• Zoom in and out of the map at any time using your mouse scroll wheel.
• To move the map, either check the “Move Track and Map together” box or right click your mouse and drag it.
• Once you get to the Finish control (double circles) and you are happy with your route, click on “Save Route”

To Draw your Route from GPS file

First you need to make a .GPX file from whatever format your watch uses. You can usually do this with your Garmin, Tom Tom (etc) software or website but if this isn’t available then other free websites such as www.gpsies.com are great for file conversion. Then:

• Pick your event on Routegadget and click on the Draw tab
• Select your Course and then select your Name
• Click on the Browse button under Load GPS FIle and “browse” to your downloaded .GPX file.
• Your route will now be overlaid at some random scale and position over the map.
• At this point you should try the Autofit button. If this looks good enough then Bingo, just Save the route and you are done
• More likely this plot won’t be very good and you will have to drag and scale the route to fit. So:-
• Click on an easily identifiable Control somewhere near the top of your route so it turns green.
• Drag this point to the correct feature check-point on the map  – note how the whole plot moves with it.
• Click on the Control again to make it go red which locks it in position
• Now pan down the map to the bottom end and find a good identifiable point and, as above, click on it to make it green then drag it to the correct position.
• Note that this time the whole plot squeezes in (or stretches out) because the top point has been locked.
• When you release the bottom control on the right feature you should find that rest of the check-points are correctly positioned.
• You can repeat this process with pairs of points to left and the right hand side if the plot is out slightly in this dimension.
• Once you are happy with the plot – click on Save.