Over the past several years, developers have come up with a number of utilities (aka mashups) which allow cyclists to plot out a route using Google Maps. While these utilities proved to be very popular, they were frequently limited just to calculating distance. A new mashup called Course Creator, which was developed by a programmer at Training Peaks, takes things a step further by allowing riders to calculate elevation over a route, as well as export route data to a GPS device for use out on the road. The utility also works with CompuTrainers, so athletes can practice a specific route indoors. For the time being, Course Creator is a stand alone utility, but Training Peaks is saying that its features should make their way into the Training-Peaks and Cycling-Peaks software in the near future.

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