Nice new letsrun opening video thing

What do I know? wrote:

It's "ok," but why do I have to watch it everytime I click on the site? I though by law it was mandatory to have a "close" or "collapse ad" option on any pop-ups like this. No one wants to see it more than once, unless you are one of the featured dudes.

there is a skip button

Skip never appeared for me. It must be a "flaw."

Please, don't change anything...

This site is so damn fast (even on a pokey dialup), the last thing we need is a buncha flash junk, avatars, huge .SIG files with pictures in them, and all that crap that slows things down.

this post is banning check.

bummer. the one time you tried to do something cool, it turned out really lame. i've seen at least a dozen times where people on the site have volunteered to help upgrade the site, so why not take them up on it? and, did you change the pictures of their athletes to appease their sponsors? i thought it was nice how you kept them in the gear they had actually worn to win their titles.

No. I updated the photos because I was sent new photos that I liked better.

And it funny because I knew people would get all upset that the people weren't in their current sponsors gear. Now people are all upset that they are in their sponsors gear. People just need to stop bitching.

The Ritz photo was from high school. The original Torres one he was in CU gear but the new one is better because it has the extra benefit of having Meb and Abdi in it (i just found out today Abdi lived in Mombasa as a kid so he's almost certainly in the race, hopefully Meb can sign up to make this race even better).

Perhaps the only better photos would be if I had shots of all 3 winning NCAA XC.

The Culpepper one originally he was winning XC nationals so maybe i should have kept that. But Nike is too powerful. Let's just put it that way... Just kidding.

I had to skip the intro. I didn't exactly want to advertise that I was taking a LR break at work.

Wejo,

I could care less about the sponsor/uniform issue (although it seems appropriate to acknowledge the actual sponsors who support our elite athletes), but I think the point is well made about the lack of women's photos. Considering that the U.S. women's teams have been more successful than the U.S. men in recent years, and have been gaining higher international profiles in terms of those recent finishes, they should also get some acknowledgement in your intro.

Just my 2 cents.

Because of Goucher, Ritz, and Torres (last 3 US NCAA XC champs until Rohatinsky) and Culpepper all being from Boulder, we decided to focus on them in the intro. They are all confirmed for the meet and this meet obviously means a lot to them. We got the impression Abdi was commited as well so we put him up as well to show there are others, but the Boulder stars all coming to battle made since for our little promo.

With the women's race, the story just wasn't as strong so we decided to have the intro focus on the men.

When the byline is "1 race, 1 champion" it didn't make sense to do both sexes in the intro, although we talked about both the men and women in our writeup.

At this point the men's race is more of a draw than the women's.

What about Kara Goucher? I don't want to start an argument, but "the men's race is more of a draw" is a personal opinion -- certainly your right as website director and a legitimate point given your viewership. However, if you are looking to promote American distance running (as it seems this site is geared towards doing), it just seems a bit out of tune to promote only half of our runners. How difficult would it be to put up a few photos of the ladies in addition to (not instead of) the men? I realize that I'm a guy making what might be an unpopular argument, but I really feel the women deserve some credit for their recent past successes.

In terms of the "1 race, 1 champion" - it's the same for the women and I'm sure they recognize that. You don't have to change the slogan, in fact maybe it would be good to start recognizing them as on par with the men.

drk wrote:

However, if you are looking to promote American distance running (as it seems this site is geared towards doing), it just seems a bit out of tune to promote only half of our runners.

How difficult would it be to put up a few photos of the ladies in addition to (not instead of) the men? I realize that I'm a guy making what might be an unpopular argument, but I really feel the women deserve some credit for their recent past successes.

In terms of the "1 race, 1 champion" - it's the same for the women and I'm sure they recognize that. You don't have to change the slogan, in fact maybe it would be good to start recognizing them as on par with the men.

I'm not promoting only half the runners. I'm promoting 5.

And thanks for the potshot: "in fact maybe it would be good to start recognizing them as on par with the men."

I never said the women weren't on par with the men. I said that the men's race is right now the most appealing race in Boulder. I'm sticking to it.

but where's Ryan Hall?

The 4 Boulder runners are all running the race. They are very firm on their commitment. It was a no brainer to use them. I thought about using only them.

The commitment from Hall is less certain, "at this time tentatively plan on racing on Boulder."

Perhaps it is his coach just being cautious but I don't want to promote him being in the race unless he's planning on being there. Perhaps he doesn't want to race at altitude (although he grew up at Big Bear) but "tentatively planning" isn't that strong a commitment.

So I decided to go with Abdi. From what I heard the organizers felt he was more certain to be running.

If any agents or runners want to confirm they're running the race, feel free to email me. It seems like now a days a lot of people just quietly show up at race (where there aren't appearance fees) without much prior notice but it would be best for the sport's promotion and their own promotion if the word got out earlier.

For example, the Ritz-Webb 10k was kept quiet until a few days before the race last year.

You guys are unbelievable. Wejo has a great intro to a great event promoting a race from HIS website and all you idiots can do is bitch. Good for you Wejo for not changing it. The womens race will be a great race as is the mens race.

The crying on this message board is just another glaring example of the wusification of America.

yourRunning wrote:

The crying on this message board is just another glaring example of the wusification of America.

Damn right you stupid yanks

yeah, i'm kinda surprised that people are being all whiny about this and about the site format (and if you're a regular, it takes A LOT to be surprised by the content of this message board!). it's a very bare-bones, functional site. the flash intro was a neat surprise, imho. a couple (few?) weeks ago, when there was a different "opening video thing", my preferred browser (Safari) wouldn't load the page. at all. so, i just opened up Firefox when I wanted to read the current letsrun news. seriously, it wasn't very difficult on my brain or nerves!

The flash intro sucks. My 5 year old cousin does better stuff in Flash.

i just have to ask, is this going to be a prom? where else do you go to an after party?