It's been a while since I've done an update but, with the reformatting of something as visible as the site's homepage, I figured I better get in the act.
The big change in March was, of course, the
homepage. Actually, since the last "monthly" update, there have been two pretty major changes to the homepage. The first, quite a while ago, was the sidebar along the right side of the page. This was put in place to feature the monthly poll, as well as upcoming events in the Hillrunner.com Events Calendar. It will likely also feature some other things I hope you will find useful in the future. The more recent change was the tabbed interface for the body of the homepage. I also intend to expand on this in the future but, for the short term future, I hope you will find that it creates a more organized homepage that can give you more information on what is going on at Hillrunner.com while making what you're looking for easier to find.
Other changes to Hillrunner.com since the last "monthly" update include some things to make Hillrunner.com look and work better. The whole site went through a facelift, with a more subtle, modern look. Also, the
links page was changed to the same type of tabbed interface that the homepage more recently went to.
Last month's poll was one that was inspired by a discussion I was part of on another site. Someone claimed that marathons should charge $500 or more for entries in order to weed out the "tourist" marathoners and only gain serious marathoners. I argued that serious marathoners would be less likely than "tourist" marathoners to pay such a steep entry fee and that such a change would actually have the opposite effect of the stated goal. On the other site, it seemed like people generally agreed with me but this person was adamant on the idea so I decided to test the theory with a poll here, where I consider the typical visitor to fit the definition of what most people would consider a serious runner. The results of the poll seem pretty clear. 62% of you would not pay more than $100 for a marathon entry fee and only 6% would pay more than $200. Given these results, if a marathon does decide to hike entry fees that significantly, its organizers might want to plan for a smaller field.
This month's poll is about a topic that surfaced on the Running News forum here. GTF, in stating that Rotterdam seems worthy of being included in the World Marathon Majors, mentioned a Bill Rodgers interview that brought up the idea of expanding the Majors to 10-12 races. So, is this an idea that would seem to be worth exploring? Should the World Marathon Majors be expanded? If so, to what point? Is 10 races still too few? Voice your opinion on the poll.
This month's tip is more of a request. With the recent changes to some parts of the site, along with some comments over the past several months that left me realizing that many people don't even realize all of what is available on Hillrunner.com, I'd like to encourage everyone to take a moment to explore Hillrunner.com. Take a look through the navigation bar on the left side of your screen and click on something you haven't before or you haven't for some time. I hope you find something that interests you. In the future, if I can establish a better habit of posting these monthly updates, I may feature a different part of the site on occasion. Not always something new, as I can't add that much new content every month, but something that I think may be of interest and may not be as well known about as it should be.
