Some of you may have noticed a new section appear on Hillrunner.com Building off the new section to the homepage originally titled News Around the Web, you can now find the
Running News Network (or Running News for short).
I'm very excited about this new addition to Hillrunner.com. I believe it is the first fully automated news aggregator available on a running website. You can get the latest news from the IAAF, USATF, Flotrack, and other sources of running/T&F news all in one location within minutes of their appearing on those websites and all from one easy to find location. For those of you who may use it, think of this as similar to Google News but with news articles grouped by source as opposed to topic.
For those of you who care about the behind the scenes details, here's essentially how the Running News Network works. Periodically, a process runs that will check sites that syndicate their content to see if new articles have been added. If there are new articles, information on the new articles will then be added to the page. The latest 5 articles from each news source gets displayed.
There are many more things that can and eventually will be done on the Running News Network. In the short term, I hope you find the features of the network useful. In the long term, expect much more flexibility in setting up the page just how you want it so you can get the latest running news all in one place and exactly in the way that works best for you.
As for the Running News forum, this is not going anywhere at this time. I know not all running news will appear on the Running News Network currently so I'm sure some articles will get posted in the forum (and forum posts are visible from the Running News Network so articles posted there will not be missed). In addition, sometimes stories come up that we just feel a need to discuss. This, in my opinion, is where the Running News forum will function best. It will be most powerful as a place where we can share our thoughts and ideas on what is going on in the running world and what it means to the sport.
Enjoy! I know I will.
