And if you're having any trouble reading this email, try viewing it in your browser.
...and we've missed you. We haven't sent a mailing since September last year(!) and we just know you've all been sitting around dying to know what's been going on. So here goes...we'll start with some good, then tell you about the bad and then quickly move back into the good.
Last year was a big year for our little site. In 2007 there were just over 127,000 new routes added around the world. To give you a little context, in 2006 we saw just 6,642 new routes, so 2007 had over a 19x increase in new routes! Site membership swelled considerably too from 5,500 members in 2006 to 17,900 in 2007. It was also quite a great year for us personally. Jeff found out that his two young sons are going to be welcoming a little sister to the family, and Adam decided to quit his day job and launch his own business. Oh - and we incorporated (more on that in the coming months). It was a great year all around. We started 2008 with another surge of keen New Years resolution runners, twice as many as last year and so the trend is continuing. And then came black March 5th...
'Twas a normal Wednesday morning two weeks ago when I (Adam) awoke to find my email inbox stuffed full of scary error messages from the WalkJogRun web server to tell me something was seriously wrong with the site. I soon discovered that the server hosting our database had died a miserable painful death. After a couple of hours trying to resuscitate I had to pull the plug. Since the database died but ALL the route data was still intact, I was able to recalculate all the route distances and start points from the files and salvage the date they were created. It took about a week but I was finally able to salvage the routes and restore them to the site.
What this means for you:
If you go to the site and see any of your routes created between January 7th 2008 and March 4th are missing your username or your description, you will still be able to see them on the map and will need to re-claim them. To do this:
We're really sorry you had to go through all that but there is an upside. Jeff is going to explain some of the benefits below but behind the scenes we now have a much improved backup regimen for all this data to make sure we don't lose anything again. Now onto the really good stuff...
As you may have noticed I (Jeff) updated the route icons on the site. I did this for a few reasons - first, we're all getting older and the previous icons were just too darn small. This meant that they were not only hard to read, but even harder to click on. Another reason for the change is we now use one image for all routes (instead of 30 separate images) and write the route number on that one image, which should make the route markers load faster. Lastly, it was just plain fun to come up with a new icon marker that looked a bit more like a signpost, fake grass and all. I hope you like the new look along with the increased readability and faster load.
We've been hard at work on lots of behind-the-scenes improvements, some of which will have little impact on you (for now) and some of which you should already be reaping the benefits of. In addition to the route icon updates, we've been going through the code, tidying it up and trying to eek out as much performance as we can. The database server failure that Adam talked about above gave us the kick in the pants we needed to give our hardware a serious upgrade. You (hopefully) have noticed a SIGNIFICANT improvement in load time over the last week. The site should feel quite snappy now. This is all thanks to a new, kick-butt server Adam built in his ever-decreasing spare time.
So now that you've read about all these improvements, we'd like to know what you think. Do you notice a difference? Please take a moment to take our survey!
Adam is at it again. This time he's raising money for Leukemia and Lymphoma in honor of his niece Haidyn Reinhardt. At the age of 3 Haidyn, was diagnosed with Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia one week after he joined the Team in Training fundraising program. A year has passed and she's in the long term maintenance phase of her treatment. She is not out of the woods yet, still facing low white blood cell counts making her acutely susceptible to common sicknesses.
Through the donations of people like you, the Leukemia and Lymphoma society is responsible for funding the research that has made the treatment program Haidyn follows dramatically more successful over the years. Please take the time to donate - your money will all go towards finding a cure.
I have two goals this year for my training - the Indianapolis half-marathon in May and the Chicago Marathon in October. That is 13.2 miles and 26.2 miles respectively. My fundraising minimum is $1,400 but I would like to push for another $4,000 or more to beat last year. While I appreciate every donation, this year if you donate 26.20 pounds / $50 I will add your name to my marathon race shirt or if you donate 13.10 pounds / $25 I will add your name to my half-marathon shirt.
