AUSTIN, Texas, May 22, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --MapMyFITNESS, a health and fitness technology company powering the Internet's largest and fastest growing community of fitness enthusiasts, today announced the launch of a completely rebuilt platform with several new features for its portfolio of online fitness websites, including an innovative feature called Courses, advanced integration of Google Maps API for Business, and a fresh look and feel. Courses will span five primary categories of sports, including cycling, running, walking, hiking and winter sports, as well as hundreds of subcategory specialty activities like cross-country skiing and unicycling.

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Courses now provides both elite athletes and casual enthusiasts an unprecedented leaderboard and "check-in" technology, and will be available initially through a private beta test for the first 100,000 users who sign up at new.mapmyfitness.com/maps/courses. The new site, which provides fitness enthusiasts five-times-faster performance, is now available to everyone at new.mapmyfitness.com, and widespread access to Courses will be offered later this summer.

"As the largest online fitness social network community with more than 9 million users, we are excited to expand the functionality of our product portfolio to our rapidly growing base," said Richard Jalichandra, chief executive officer of MapMyFitness. "Our goal is to enable athletes in the 40-plus sports supported by MapMyFITNESS to benefit from this enhanced level of product capability and functionality."

In addition to the introduction of Courses, MapMyFITNESS' new features include the latest mapping technology from Google. MapMyFITNESS enables users to create new Courses directly from their iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, Windows Mobile or iPad. The Google Maps API v 3 integration also provides route details like traffic patterns and temperature in real-time, which will help users better plan and experience activities.

"MapMyFITNESS is integrating their applications with Google Maps to help top athletes and beginners easily visualize their routes," said Dan Chu, Google product manager. "We're always excited to see people using Google Maps in new, innovative ways."

The Courses feature does real-time processing of MapMyFITNESS' database of over 50 million routes and 30,000 event courses to produce a fun, engaging and motivating experience that helps users plan activities, measure their fitness and track their progress in real-time and over time.

Specifically, Courses includes:

"The new MapMyFITNESS websites and applications were designed to support a user base that ranges from casual beginners to ultra-competitive athletes," said Robin Thurston, co-founder and chief product officer of MapMyFITNESS. "The Courses feature, powered by our integration with Google's latest mapping technology, is a big differentiator for us, and we think users are really going to enjoy tracking their workouts and competing against others."

MapMyFITNESS has been recognized by some of the world's most credible authorities as the premier fitness application, including TIME's "50 Best Apps list in 2012" (the only fitness app named this year), Runner's World UK's "Best Running App of 2012," About.com Reader's Choice "Best Running App" in 2012 and a consistent top five ranking in iTunes' Health and Fitness category. More than 200,000 health and fitness activities are logged each day by MapMyFITNESS users across 40 different sports not just running and cycling.

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MapMyFITNESS Launches Groundbreaking Applications and Redesigned Website