You're right but that's on purpose. I'm mainly using it to display the progress while walking long distance marches (40 km and more a day) and people are not only curious where you are but also what progress i've made. They can zoom in any time.

I've also added a marker thats clickable and then shows you the kilometers i've walked. Google automatically zooms in on the marker once you've clicked.

If you want real-time (or near real time) tracking, you'll have to use ajax to add points and move the marker.

Edit: now i see that you solved it already