Keyhole / Google Earth - best route finder

I remember driving around my neighborhood down random streets with my Dad on our way to dinner measuring his previous running distance. I also remember him with a street map and some rolling measurement tool like some sort of navigator mapping out routes. The internet has changed things a bit, but I hadn't found a really flexible way to measure running routes until I downloaded Keyhole (now Google Earth) a few months ago.

As long as you live in a somewhat populated area, you can get to street level pretty quickly with Google Earth. Once you are there from the tools tab you can select Measure, and then select Path. Now you are armed for route finding. All you have to do is click on the map and play connect the dots between street corners to until you get to the distance that you want to run.

It's that easy. And it adds one more step to the pre-run fun.