RIP DyeStat Founder John Dye - February 13th, 1936 - September 30th, 2022

at the risk of sounding hyperbolic, i can honestly say without dyestat i don't know that running would have grown into the life long passion for me that it did. I was in high school 2002-2006, which imo was the golden age of dyestate. Very grateful for that website! RIP and best regards to his family.

I believe Dye sold it to ESPN because he was retiring and ESPN tried to incorporate it into an all-sport site where it shared space with hoops, football, etc....naturally it got less traffic and the whole thing went over like an elevator in an outhouse. There was a brief revival with TrackTalk to get members back but many had moved on and it went under too. Then Runnerspace took over Dyestat and there it's been since but it never regained the magic of the original site.

As a HS grad of 1998, aka the slowest era ever of HS running, I think a site like Dyestat really helped get distance running going again in the US. It's not a surprise that performances really picked up in 2000, 2001 once those kids could see in real time how others were doing across the nation. What I experienced was only seeing those results via T&F News or The Harrier magazines (which were outdated by 3-4 weeks at least by the time you got them).

But of course Jim Ryun, Gerry Lindgren and Prefontaine did OK without it. Just saying…

Zatopek was another top member.

We tried to play nice with ESPN even with the buyout but they refused to port over the v-bulletin boards and insisted on their crap boards that were not user friendly. Once all the information from the old boards was archived and inaccessible that was the nail in the coffin.

I was active on the new tracktalk boards for a couple years in college but mostly around the spike forums. The playground was pretty dead and all of the main people I enjoyed talking to were already people that I chatted with on FB.

I figured SteveU would be posting here on this thread. Trying to moderate 2500 HS kids and a few hundred old track fans had to be a terribly tiresome experience.

I believe he tried very hard to convince members to stay, but no one liked the new format.

Dyestat was sold to Student Sports, Inc. which was a shelf of similar websites that ESPN's Rise division later acquired.

I dont think Dye had total control of his website after 2001 but still operated as is through the end of the Student Sports lassiez faire years.

RISE killed dyestat. Terrible transition and tactics to engage users. Disney / ESPN could have paid $1000 for rights to a commercial VBulletin forum or hired developers from existing resources to iron out a mirror image of the website.

Easy lay up.

ESPN Rise via Ben Sylvian (recent Northwestern grad at the time) chose not to do this and that's what essentially killed Dyestat in 2009-2010.

The problems that plague our current high school running internet:

* funding - ad markets died big time in 2015 which was a huge backbone to the internet overall. This bred into different problems including a dependency on subscription based models for publisher incomes (see bad consumer bullet below)

* teacher/coach disposable incomes are limited (i.e. frugal retired math teacher vs young single teacher-coach five years in getting hosed salary-wise)

* organizational revenues (coaches association)

* association support (media credentials, exposure)

* bad consumers (people w/o disposable income or limited disposable income, people cheating the internet by redistributing content to potential audiences, people not being innovative and buying in when they should)

I unfortunately feel the last bullet above encapsulates a lot of people interested in distance running and a lot of the coaches who are a single consumer that could bring in others. Many coaches have unnecessary egos and attitudes. They are used to being the expert and then when they cant afford to become a better expert using a subscription website they get grumpy and spread bad things through word of mouth. The ignorant branch of coaches will buy a $50 steak dinner and drink $20 beers this upcoming Friday night but they wont spend similar on access to content and data once per year.

Mind boggling.

So we cant get good content because we dont have legit funding and we dont have good funding because the majority here and interested in distance running are bad consumers.

That's why we are in the moronathon era of our sports' high school coverage. Because the only people willing to slave their life away to produce legitimate running content are those gullible enough to "work for milesplit" (i.e. they pay to work for it in some capacity or their parents afford them basement space to work from). These people who end up at milesplit and flotrack are certainly not talented, they are desperate and limited in life. The bad consumers (i.e. grumpy coaches) also sometimes dont understand the work that goes into putting things on a screen so that lack of knowledge adds a huge constraint. Then we get stuck with inferior goods which is a business model that places like Walmart can take on for the general population but not something that can be catered to for the individual sport of distance running.

Coverage is basically all or none, know it or you dont and many times milesplit falters on this front which causes the idea of running content on the internet to lose credibility too. In an ideal market layout you would have competition between privavte entities. Unfortunately the high school running market consists of charities instead and partial implementations/data captures only.

Is your name Dan Johnson per chance?

Amen! Said it perfectly. Would not be obsessed with running and have it be a passion if it wasn’t for dyestat.

Fun Fact

Am I the only one who remembers that Steve Magness used to post on dyestat. He was very kind and personally answered questions I had back in the day. He’s screen name was his name. It sure fits because he appears to be a nice guy and was very cool and approachable for being a high school running god to a bunch of high schoolers when he was exiting his college career and getting into physiology and what he is known for today.

so, what is the equivalent to dyestat today? Is there anything? Let’s run was too general and broad when your that age, even though I visited for pro news and messageboards thinking I’d be the next bekele and looking at training advice

Some more famous Dyestat names

Rest in peace.

Never met John but talked to him on phone after ESPN debacle as he really wanted Dyestat to continue.

Seemed like a good human being who contributed so much to our sport.

I found this good interview with John on the old running radio show Runaround on ESPN/CBS radio show by Running Maryland. 2012

Go to about 22 minute mark.

yourlisten.com

The Runaround - 9/3/12 Uploaded by runningmaryland at Your Listen

@yourlisten_com

The Runaround - 9/3/12 uploaded by runningmaryland

Link:yourlisten.com/runningmaryland/the-run...

The “Cool Pictures” thread was legendary.

Also the spikes forum where everyone would should of images of their spike and gear collections.

Man, weird nostalgia this morning. Dyestat 2003-2005 was goated. Was just a special time to be a high school runner. RIP John.

I particularly remember Lauren Fleshman posting on DyeStat when she was a freshman at Stanford that she would answer questions for HS runners. I thought that was a classy thing to do and have thought highly of her since then. Of course you could never do that today.

I would feel like I dropped the ball if I did not post.

Nervous about high school, I stumbled onto the dyestat forums in the spring of 1999 trying to see where I actually stood as an incoming freshman runner. Also to seek out training advice.

I found dyestat to be a healthy after school activity. I couldve been doing a lot of other things after school like earing pizza, playing video games and smoking pot like all my peers but instead I chose to run and surf the boards learning more about my sport.

I will always thank John Dye and the rest of the Dye family, SteveU, Rich Gonzalez, ZatOpek, herr, Marc Davis, Doug Binder, the other Legends including Patti, homeless, Orville and Wineturtle, and many runners from the golden years of distance running who not only turned out to create that environment but also make it thrive in its own unique way.

Before smartphones, widespread social media and things like "screenshots", dyestat was a place to go to for results and recaps that the scoreboard section of the local newspaper omitted. For instance, when a junior ran 4:15 solo on a late April windy night that we hadnt heard of before, we'd either conclude it was a lap short or we'd become excited because we just found the next up and coming stud to latch onto as the championship season kicks into full gear. It was always exciting when a running legend of the sort showed up to answer a question and their screen name gave you just a hint that it was them.

The original Dyestat represents happy times and the coming of age of track and field on the internet for many people. This was a good place before big tech social media took over.

Thank you John Dye and staff for the healthy after school activity. Who knows what rabbit holes I wouldve gone down without.