Strava and Google Maps may be detailed, but there is a case for old fashioned paper for the modern runner
- Digital maps may offer a range of functions paper never can, but are we losing something by relying on modern smartphones and watches?
There’s a map that has travelled with me from Hong Kong to the United States and back to Hong Kong over the past several years.
It is a large topographic map of Hong Kong, printed on glossy paper and measuring about one-and-a-half metres in width. On it, I can trace with my fingers trails that I’ve run and hiked on. I can see at a glance Hong Kong’s fantastic layout, with pockets of hyper urban density mixed in with swathes of green, and tightly-packed contour lines depicting the city’s steeply soaring peaks. With one cast of the eye, I can imagine all sorts of future adventures to be had in the city’s great outdoors.
I bought the map on a whim. I’ve always liked the stories that maps tell, and I also wanted something to remind me of home in the several years that I would spend living in the United States.
It soon became much more than a memento. Pinned hastily with drawing pins and adhesive Command poster hanging strips to my dormitory walls, the colourful map soon became my go-to ambassador of Hong Kong. It served as a quick and easy way to explain to friends what Hong Kong is like: mountainous, surrounded by water and islands, with 40 per cent of all land protected as country parks and only 25 per cent of available land actually developed.
