We Danced All Night in a Ditch Full of Rocks

May 18, 2024

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Member Since:

Apr 13, 2011

Gender:

Male

Goal Type:

Local Elite

Running Accomplishments:

27 100 Milers (sub-24 at Wasatch and the Bear). 3:11 Marathon (2011).

Short-Term Running Goals:

Another sub-24 at Wasatch. Sub 3:00 marathon this winter

Personal:

I am a proud father of eight. I am an American Soldier. And I don't do anything unless I think it has meaning, which is why I don't have TV.

Click to donate

to Ukraine's Armed Forces

Miles:	This week:	0.00	Month:	0.00	Year:	0.00

Thu, Jun 09, 2011

Easy Miles	Threshold Miles	Marathon Pace Miles	Track speed mileage	Hill mileage	Total
0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00

This is my last entry at fastrunningblog.com. It's not because of the great people here. At the risk of sounding grumpy, let me share with you why I am leaving. Maybe things will improve.

1. Input. It doesn't work well. There is no cut and paste feature in the applet, and there is no way to enter text on anything but a computer. Need to have smartphone and iPad compatability. If the blog is to survive, this must happen soon.

2. The mileage breakdowns are too balkanized. hill v. easy v. track. Whaaaa? I train for both marathons and ultras. So, if I do a 30 mile run with less than 4000' climb in 7 hours, that is definitely an easy run, but not Easy in the sense of the blog. But it's not a Hill run either, with so little climb. Easy would be a lazy 4 on the BST, Hill would have at least 6000' climb. So I have to wonder what to do. That should not happen in a blog. It should be fire and forget. What about a custom field(s)? That would solve the problem.

3. No total climb feature. Sorry, this is relevant today, especially with trail runs and ultras catching on. Ignoring it is like sitting in your garage with your USATF measuring wheel and your Jim Fixx books hoping we nonconformist weirdos will all go away. I have complained about this to DailyMile and other blogs, and they are addressing it. Need climb.

4. Internet Explorer issues. Huh? I work at a federal installation. We can't just go and download Firefox. Not going to happen. Content providers need to please their users, not vice versa.

OK, that sounded more like a rant. But it's more reflective of the fact that I had huge hopes for this site, hoping I could migrate over from DailyMile. But DailyMile is still going to be my number one until I find a better mousetrap. I hope that I can come back, and soon. I have a very special relationship with a mapping software vendor where, if I were to give him four bullets like I did above, a software patch would appear in my inbox two days later. He is thriving. Hopefully that will happen here.

I will still stay on as a user and check on y'all once in a while. Meantime, check out what Kelly has to offer on dailymile.com. My handle there is Hyperphil. Kelly has run Wasatch and the Bear and has a good thing going.

Run gently out there.

Hyperphil

Weight: 0.00

Comments

From jun on Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 14:23:25 from 66.239.250.209

You're my hero.

From crockett on Wed, Jun 15, 2011 at 00:47:42 from 71.32.232.58

What a nerd. Ha, ha.

From jeffmc on Thu, Aug 04, 2011 at 19:24:45 from 131.216.80.154

I just randomly stumbled upon your blog here, and while I am sure that what I am going to say won't really appease you, it may help you to see why things are how they are on the blog.

Sasha really only works on the blog in his spare time. When he had a different job he had more time to spare. Now, with a more demanding job, and 7 kids, he simply doesn't have that much time to put into the blog anymore. I do believe that he is working on some things to make the blog compatible with smartphones (but that will take a while due to reasons listed above), and the firefox thing is really nothing more than Sasha endorsing firefox because he likes it better (when I have used IE to blog it works fine). The templates have always been kind of a mess, but the only reason the template you have on your blog exists is because someone else requested it (when I joined the blog there were fewer template options, and most were more simple).

Any other changes that may come about eventually to make the blog more user friendly will be a long time coming, in part because of the situation that Sasha finds himself in (blame the bad economy for part of that one), and the blog itself is not a moneymaker for him. If this was his job, I am sure he would have a patch up and running within a day or two for major issues, but it is nothing more than a hobby for him.

This all doesn't mean that the blog shouldn't be updated, because it should. Hopefully Sasha works out the issues with templates, smartphone compatibility, etc. some day, and adds some other options/features that make the blog better. Until then, the main draw for many people to the blog is the intimacy that exists among many of its users (which based on your post it appears you recognize).

Anyhow, good luck in your running/blogging (even though it is not on the frb)!

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