Where will you run your next marathon ?

Who has never heart of Facebook? During the past few years, Facebook has become one of the most if not THE most active social network on the web. More than 60 millions users have created an account. And I’m part of it. I joined a few month ago to keep in touch with old friends.

Recently, I had to face this basic fact : Thousands of runners coming from all over the world are visiting 42k195.com every week and as a matter of fact, I know very few of you.

The statistics clearly show me that you appreciate the site, but I would like to know a little more. What do you like most? What needs to be fixed? How would you like the site to evolve?

photo credit: luc legay

As there is today no way on the web site (apart from the e-mail) for me to interact with you . I’ve decided to give Facebook a try and start the conversation with you all.

Are you a Facebook user ? You can connect with me on the 42k195.com page
If you are not, you can still visit the page.

And if you are a Facebook expert, I’m eager to learn from you any tip or advice on how to improve the page. I’m a newbie in Facebook.

Let the experiment begin !

At the end of January, I was brainstorming to find a new kind of post I could publish on this blog. As the topic of the blog and the main site (42k195.com) is worldwide marathons. I was asking myself a simple question. Who would be the best to talk about the diversity of marathons around the world ?

The answer came as a flash : the marathons organizers. So I decided to give it a try. I first asked Nicole Rouvet, the director of the new Marathon des oubliés des vacances, the first marathon ever organized in Clermont-Ferrand, France, if she would answer a few questions to present her marathon.

The answer wasn’t long to come back and it was a big YES ! The first interview was in French and can be found on the French version of this blog.
Premier marathon de Clermont-Ferrand : Interview de Nicole Rouvet

This gave me encouragement to keep on in that direction, this time in English. My second interview was with on Yakima River Canyon marathon. It’s director Bob Dolphin gave me a wonderful interview. You should have a look at it here.

I kept on asking for interviews and the answers were always very positive. This lead me to decide to make directors’ interview a recurring rendez-vous on the blog. Every Sunday, a new interview will be published.

Tomorrow (February 17th) we will focus on Sandi Heal from the Royal Victoria Marathon. Next week we’ll than fly to Arizona to meet Jeff Fultz, the director of the Shiprock Marathon.

This is only the beginning… I want to visit all continents with my interviews. In the next weeks, we’ll visit my home continent Europe, going to Finland and to Belgium. Who knows were we’ll be heading next.

My goal with these short interviews is to show the diversity of marathons available throughout the world and the kindness of the organizers that dedicate their time to let us runners enjoy the race and the whereabouts.

If you are a marathon director, a member of an organization committee, or know one who would like to take part in this project, do not hesitate do drop me an e-mail or leave a comment below. I’ll be glad to come back to you. All interviews are done by e-mail, for now in French or in English.

All interviews are listed on a specific page of the blog.

Comments are welcome if you like the concept or have clues to improve the interviews.

Ecuador is the 6th South American country registered on the web site.

There is only one marathon registered yet for Ecuador : the maratón de Guayaquil which will be held on October 7th.

I’m glad to announce that 800 marathons have been entered in the race database.

Number 800 is the Timberline marathon. A trail marathon run in Oregon on the slopes of Mt Hood in the middle of September.

It follows the Pacific Crest Trail from historic Timberline Lodge high on Mt Hood to down to Timothy Lake. The race is organized by Rogue Multi-Sport, LLC.

Timberline marathon isn’t the only marathon in Oregon. Here is the list of all marathons we have registered in Oregon.

The marathon directory continues to get bigger. We have collected 700 marathons worldwide in 83 different countries.

#700 is the San Juan Island marathon that was held at the begging of the month in Friday Harbour.
This marathon reminds me a lot of good memories, since I had the opportunity to spend a month there when I was a teenager. But I that time, I didn’t even know what a marathon was.

If you want to help us improve the quality of our marathon calendar don’t hesitate to send us any information regarding a marathon that is not yet in the database. If the race has a living website, we will include it. You can contact us either by sending a message at info@42k195.com or by leaving a comment on this post.

I’ve been hearing a lot of buzz about Squidoo, the new Web 2.0 plateform created by Seth Godin.

Squidoo lets it’s users create lens (Web pages) about a subject, providing information about the topic, links to other web sites, books,… Once the lens is created users, can vote for them and add comments.

It is so easy to use that I wanted to give it a try. I created my first lens.
Gess what it’s about marathon calendars.

600 marathons have been registered on 42k195.com

The 600th marathon comes from South Africa. It is the Knysna Forest Marathon witch will be held next July on the 14th.

Where will you run your next marathon ?

Goodbye original design

Today, we can say goodbye to the original design of www.42k195.com. Since Novembre 2006, the home page showed the list of the next marathons. But studying the navigation paths of our visitors on Google analytics, it became clear that most of them didn’t figure out that the marathons list could be viewed on a map.
That’s too bad because we are convinced that searching for marathons on a map should be the reason why people come to www.42k195.com in the first place.

A brand new design
In the new design, the home page combines the list and the map view. There is no need to click from one to the other view.
By default, only the marathons of the current month will be displayed, but you can easily change the preset criteria the display the marathons you like or the whole database.

The size of the icon used to display the marathon location has been reduced to make the map more readable even with a large number of races displayed.

The page showing detailed information on the marathons has also been revised to show a tidier design. The information shown is more compact and we hope more easy to extract information from.

As the traffic on the site is growing, we wanted to help visitors promote www.42k195.com. So we added an add to delicious button (save this page) and also provided a send to a friend button in the marathon page.

We hope you’ll like it…

500 marathons have been registered on 42k195.com

The 500th marathon is an american one. It is the Charlottesville Marathon in Viginia.
Our coverage of the marathons in the States isn’t complete yet, but we already provide information on 105 different marathons.

Marathons in the States

We also have recently entered the CLICO Trinidad and Tobago Marathon wich help us cover now 80 different countries in the world.

Marathon in Trinidad and Tobago

Where will you run your next marathon ?

We wish everyone a great, an injury free, a new 2007. We hope to see you back in January to help you figure out what marathon you’ll run next spring. There are plenty of exciting races still available for registration. Do not be afraid to enter smaller marathons. Do not be afraid to enter a race in a foreign country.

If you want to run, then run a mile. If you want to experience another life, run a marathon.

Emil Zatopek

Keep on running and train well..

Where will you run your next marathon ?