A Passion for Running

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!