Have your say in the Runnersworld.co.uk survey

Nice that you are listening to your readers.

:)
Posted: 25/10/2006 at 21:48

Just did it. Suggested more pictures of nubile lady runners in tight shorts, asked if they could fix notificaions and sort the rubbish search facility.
Posted: 25/10/2006 at 23:17

It's super that so many of you are taking the time to fill the survey in - thank you. Tons of useful insight, lots of new ideas and some very good constructive criticism.

It'll have a very useful bearing on some immediate tweaks we can make, as well as bigger projects over the year ahead.

Watch this space...

Sean, RW
Posted: 26/10/2006 at 14:41

I have just completed this, and hopefully been helpful.

Welsh Alex - I agree with you about the search facility!! It is quite frustrating. And wished I'd have asked for pictures of equally fit young men, naked from the waist up!
Posted: 27/10/2006 at 10:28

are you automatically disqualified from the competition if you happen to be a web developer with lots of experience in usability etc.. he he :-)
Posted: 27/10/2006 at 16:22

Improved Search Facility was top of my wishlist too.

Also, forgot to mention in the survey that I thought another useful feature would be a "My Upcoming Races" list in your Profile, so that you didn't have to keep asking/answering the question "So, what race(s) are you doing next/soon..."
Posted: 27/10/2006 at 16:37

Just doenthe survey. Didn't have much to say on improvements as I like the site and I'm not a computer geek! I have also just subscribed to the Magazine after reading my first issue whilst flying to the States.
Posted: 27/10/2006 at 16:55

I was interested to see the question about adding local routes. A brilliant example of what could be achieved is to be found in the US athletics website http://www.usatf.org/routes/

There are 84,000 routes marked, it is simple to use and on my trips to the states I use it a lot to find suitable places to run. OK it could still be improved e.g. find routes within a certain radius of a location, but it is a great start. I'm sure runner's world readers would soon populate it with suitable routes?
Posted: 30/10/2006 at 12:50

That USATF site is great.
I used the Advanced Search and found a few runs near London, although I had trouble when I tried to Create a UK run myself.
I guess the USATF might object if RW users hi-jacked their site to start logging UK runs?
Or maybe not?
Maybe RW could get in touch with them officially - either about a site share, or about how to set up something similar...?
Posted: 30/10/2006 at 14:28

ClimbingDan, all insight *very* welcome; the more expert the better - please fire away if you haven't already.

One and a bit questions about routes - how important do you think it would be to enable trail runs to be logged - and how adequately do you think a satellite-view (as on the USATF site) would work for trail runs?

My instinct is that a route-sharing system would be perfect for trail runs because local knowledge could make all the difference between a good run and a terrible one... but that trying to follow a route using a satellite view wouldn't work very well.
Posted: 30/10/2006 at 14:50

I agree about trail runs. I bet most of would be surprised about some hidden gem of a route a few miles from home that we hadn't found. Very local knowledge is often key.

The USATF site allows you to switch between map and satellite view and that works best. It sounds like the technology is available already in a form that works very well so shouldn't be too hard to link into????
Posted: 30/10/2006 at 15:07

I should have been a bit clearer: the limitation is that the map detail only extends to roads - non-road areas are just white, with no footpaths, tracks, contours or features.

We have a few potential ways of incorporating proper maps into a service like this, but if there was a way of making the Google-based system work it would be by far the simplest project
Posted: 30/10/2006 at 15:20

SF - marking out trail runs depends on the resolution of the satellite imagery, which varies widely within the UK. I'm lucky in that both where I live and where I work have hi-res imagery, and trail runs can be mapped with astonishing accuracy. The only problem is where the path goes under trees!

One additional feature that would be good, would be a "Notes" section, so that tricky twists/turns on a route could be (literally) spelled out, up to and including COMPLETELY DESCRIBING the route in words.

Posted: 30/10/2006 at 15:26

The ability to Search within a single thread would be nice (as some threads are HUGE!)

Are RW going to tell us the results of this survey at some point?
If so, when?

Posted: 14/11/2006 at 16:59