San Diego is a hot spot for physical fitness.
We’re home to the Active Network, which helps event organizers manage their able-bodied participants, along with a whole host of other sports-related businesses – everything from sporting goods stores and motocross manufacturers to CrossFit boxes and yoga studios.
Maybe it’s the year-round sunshine, but something helped foster the relatively obscure industry known as the Sports and Active Lifestyle Cluster:
The “Sports and Active Lifestyle Cluster” … includes more than 1,200 businesses. It employs more than 23,000 people. It provides a $1.35 billion impact to the region. It’s added 700 jobs in just the last two years.
So it comes as little surprise our residents like to get outside and move. Strava, an app that lets cyclists and runner track their favorite routes, created a global interactive map to lay out where the world’s citizens (at least, those using the app in the first place) are huffing and puffing. Hat tip to the fine folks at Vox, who offered this handy key:
Red lines show especially highly-used routes, followed by dark blue lines, then light blue. The map is remarkably detailed, allowing you to zoom in to an individual street and see which lane bikers traveled in most often. It shows which paths and streets are clogged with users and which are curiously overlooked.
Strava is mainly used by competitive exercisers looking to improve their times and beat others’, so this isn’t a picture of bicycle commuting or casual walking. But as a whole, it’s the most comprehensive picture of recreational biking and running we have.
We noticed Vox somehow left America’s Finest City off its list. Here’s are the best places to gallivant in greater San Diego, according to your tires and sneakers.
You’ll notice the usual haunts highlighted in red – Balboa Park looks ready to bleed out, and Mission Bay is pretty well carved. The Gaslamp Quarter downtown is a little less frequented, what with Harbor Drive’s waterfront views so close. Play with the map yourself to see how popular your favorite routes are, or where you might be missing out.