Map Your Ride

Before going for a bike ride/run it is nice to be able to accurately calculate how far your going to ride/run and to be able to see an elevation profile for the route. To do this I have been using two websites:

http://www.mapmyride.com/
http://www.mapmyrun.co.uk/

Both website work well and are very similar in many ways. When using either website I would recommend selecting the auto follow roads option. As the name of this option suggests, it means that when your mapping a new route and select a new location on the map, it will find the shortest route sticking to roads.

Mapmyrun.co.uk
I used to prefer mapmyrun.co.uk because its auto mapping was much quicker(it still is quicker but the difference is less noticeable), this is probably because is gets less traffic and because the website has less bells and whistles. It never seems to fail to auto route which mapmyride.com has on some occasions. It also gives a basic but adequate elevation profile.

Mapmyride.com
Mapmyride.com seems to have improved its auto routing recently but now has floating advertisements which can be annoying. It has a much better elevation profile diagram which is colour coded with different colours used for different percentage inclines and also gives you figures for elevation gain/loss. The map at the start of this post is from one of my recent rides, I mapped the route in advance on mapmyride.com, once you are a member they have an option for embedding your maps into blogs which is helpful if you have a blog or website but most people probably won't use.

Conclusion
I use and would recommend both websites. I use maymyrun.co.uk when I'm in a rush and mapmyride.com when I want a better elevation diagram and the option to embed the map into this blog.