A Passion for Running

The poor, poor members of the CRN (writing) team – they’ve had to put up with an endless stream of emails where I go on and on and on about all the cool stuff we’re building over at completerunning.

Something Jeanne has learned very well (and that even I have only recently come to understand) is that I only have two gears – full out and dead stop.

I am definitely a manic-depressive sort of character when it comes to my passions and work. I go through periods where I am inexaustible. Periods where I am up till 2:00 a.m. night after night. Periods where I have to keep a notebook so I don’t lose all of the ideas that flow into my mind in wave after wave of creative nirvana. Periods where noone can keep up to me. These periods generally last for a month or so and then…

…it all comes crashing down and I am utterly useless.

Then, I rest up (sometimes for as much as a month), rinse and repeat.

When it comes to non-running stuff, I am not a marathoner – I do not know pacing.

And I’m ok with that – it’s mostly nice to have figured out how “I am”.

But I imagine it must be hard to be around me. If that last statement rings a bell (Jeanne?), I apologize.

As the Scorpion said to the frog, “It’s in my nature“.

Some day soon, I will start talking about running again. I just needed to get this off my chest.

For those of you who don’t know, I am one tiny part of the dynamic team over at CRN. In addition to the great writing the team does, now is a good time to visit us because of the numerous enhancements and additions we’ve made:

1. A new and much improved runner focused race calendar
2. Great new ways to promote your running blog
3. Quite a few improvements to the Running Blog Family Directory
4. A brand new forum
5. And lots of widgety/gadgety type things for your blog or website.

Ok, the info-mercial is now over. We now return you back to our regularly scheduled program.

Aaron and I are excited about stuff we’ve got going on at completerunning. First, we thought long and hard (okay, it took all of 5 seconds) on a new mission statement and this is what we came up with:

We love our new mission which, when we think about it, is really not so new at all. We’ve just formalized it into some fancy words that have been guiding what we’ve been doing all along.

Along with the new statement, we did a complete overhaul of the home page. It’s now powered by WordPress and we’re quite happy about how it is coming along. On the CR home page, you’ll find a growing information resource, a place to find cool running stuff, and the hub of our domain. You can even do a google search for everything we have to offer (including all of the completerunning blogs) from there. It’s finally becoming what a home page should be so please stop by, let us know what you think and tell us if there is anything you’d like to see added!

Oh, and make sure you tell your friends and families about the home page. It’s a great place for people to get gift ideas for that special runner in their lives.

Please fire me off a note if you are have been blocked by my uber-comment spam fighting system.

Here’s my email address: mark at completerunning dot com

I had an Easter filled weekend and decided to get some webmaster type stuff done today.

I recently upgraded to WordPress 1.5 which TOTALLY rocks. It has some great new features and handles SPAM very well. However, I still found I had to install a plugin or two to make it rock-solid against the SPAM demon.

Then I realized I’d have to do the same thing (install and configure plugins) for EVERY Complete Running blog. Ugh. I shuddered and thought, “there has GOT to be a better way – a way I can deal with SPAM at the domain level and which requires NO work on the part of the bloggers”.

I wanted a magic pill.

To make a long story short, I found my answer but wasn’t comfortable with the method. Then I remembered my chocolate friend Jon had some experience in this area. A couple of emails to Jon and some more reading and I had my magic pill comfortably digested. Now I’m confident I’ve won a MAJOR battle against blog SPAM. No comment or trackback SPAM in any of the roughly 16 blogs CR hosts in the last 8 hours.

The best thing is that I can now get rid of those hard to read CODE THINGS you’re used to seeing on complete running blogs. Can we all yell a collective, “yay!”?

THANK YOU Jon!

With my newfound victory in hand, I set out to upgrade a blog. Pamalamadingdong was my first guinea pig (are you next?). The upgrade went quickly and flawlessly – for the MOST part. Pam’s style template gave me some trouble and I had run out of time due to visitors arriving in the Iocchelli household.

But guess what? Miss Zoot came to the rescue and got the rest of the job done. She did a great job rescuing and even improving Pam’s template.

THANK YOU Zoot!

Yesterday I was given the most awesome opportunity. Lesley invited me to speak at a Running Room Half-Marathon clinic on the subject of Heart Rate Monitors. Evidently, my frequent talks about good old “Gretchen” convinced her I was the guy to give a down-to-earth talk about running with a HRM.

The title of my talk was 30 Things About Heart Rate Monitors. It was largely a collection of personal thoughts and experiences using a HRM, but it also had some limited technical information (e.g. on HRM Training Zones) and I tried to connect some Running Room teachings (e.g. hydrate hydrate hydrate!) as they relate to heart rates and using a HRM.

Even though I was kind of nervous standing in front of fifty runners, it was great fun. Most importantly it felt awesome to pass something on to folks closer to the beginnings of their distance running careers. I still remember those times very well!

I typed the presentation in MS Word. For those of you who are interested, I’ll be converting it to html and posting it on the Complete Running website.

Thanks Lesley for the opportunity to speak. I was truly honoured!

Dr Miller and Lesley each have this month’s articles posted on their respective websites. Make sure you go take a look!

You just gotta go visit Marlene! She’s new to Complete Running and we’ve dubbed her The Complete Running Expert.

Her first article is on nutrition but, in addition to writing non-solicited articles, Marlene will also write in response to questions you may have about anything related to running. If that’s not enough for ya, Marlene will also be visiting you RBF members looking for interesting topics to write on.

Marlene is a wealth of information but she also has many people at her disposal to help answer questions she can?t.

Pop by and give her a read. You won’t be sorry you did!

A couple of weeks ago Aaron took over adding people to the RBF directory so I could deal with some other tasks – the RBF World Map for instance. Am I ever glad he did! When I was looking after the directory, we were averaging 1 or 2 additions each week. Now, it seems we are averaging 1 to 3 each DAY!

Sorry newbies but I think I’m gonna stop welcoming bloggers each time we add you to the directory. I just don’t want to have as many “welcomes” as I do other kinds of posts. The message to our existing RBF members is be sure to check the directory OFTEN because it is growing every day!

So, WELCOME to all you future running bloggers! We’re glad to have ya!

Thanks to good ol’ “Ugly Toes” Marisa the completerunning bulletin board now has 13 registered members!

I know not everyone is a “joiner” but it’d be cool to get some more of you folk into the BB and so we can get some talking going! If you join – make sure you go introduce yourself at the topic Marisa started here.

In case you are wondering about our motivation, Aaron and I are new to the whole website game and our goals are simply to learn about this stuff and build an on-line running community.

TRUST ME – we ain’t making a cent on this thing but we’re open to ideas as to how we can! ha!

Hope to see ya on the BB…

OH! Almost forgot to mention – Janice had a great idea too. Check it out here.