Is there anyway of going back to the people who manage run sign ups and just ask them to from their internal system to do a sort by, and show number of runs that were done at end of challenge. Or can you dump it into an csv as an owner, sort it and post a screen capture?

It really is a thorn in my side because frequent runs was the idea behind the challenge and not being able to see that took away some of the engagement factor and positive reinforcement people see by doing a run and see their tally go up that day. The entire idea has always been to just get people out the door and the motivator has really been something along the lines of "today I will get from 49 to 50 with this run....now I am only 3 runs behind the pace and only need three doubles" (or whatever the person cares about.

While I understand you didn't want to use the EricJ platform, I think you killed a key engagement angle of the challenge along the way by not having run tally visible. Just seeing your own run tally in a data entry screen was insufficient.

Truly.

It is disappointing.

Honestly after logging my first few runs I gave up. It was much easier to sync the info on Eric's platform. I did his challenge again this year. It was never my intension to shoot for the 100/100, more as a way to track/boost my frequency through the winter months. If I was gunning for the full 100 I suspect I might have stuck it out with the logging.

I had good totals (mileage and runs) but I didn’t bother signing up for either. Nobody wants to go offsite and manually log their activities.

That's all that really matters. I hope that you accomplished what you wanted. The engagement here has always been about helping each other get that "one extra run" each week, or whatever.

Strava sync is certainly better than the RSU data form. But, RSU wasn't all that big of a deal as long as you kept up with it. However, the inability to see the standings per the challenge rules was a bummer. It was frustrating the ST leadership made several commitments, and then didn't follow-through....and, ultimately stopped communicating any sort of status, or a revised plan, or even a "we tried and failed, sorry" response.

I have always enjoyed the banter with those around me in the standings, encouraging new comers and giving them tips, and reading other peoples adventures....and mistressK photos, always mistressK snowy pix. I think all these different forms of engagement and the consequent consistent stream of traffic have always helped everyone to stay with it for 100 days, and maybe get those few extra runs in. We lost a lot of that this year for various reasons.

I agree. I don't think I logged my last month-worth of runs, and I have no idea how many runs I did over the 100 days.
Did I run more than I would have without the challenge? Probably. So in that sense, mission accomplished. But the tracking and leaderboard situation took a lot away from it this year.

Just a general reply here. I don't think Ryan has ever done the 100/100 so he likely does not fully grasp how engagement works on the challenge.

Inside my own tech company, I ask managers and directors to be users and testers of our own product, because that makes them feel the user experience and the pain of features and functionality that are not up to the end user premium experience. I think Ryan can't appreciate the end user experience, because he has not been an end user. On the flip side, I lived the end user experience of the challenge over 18 years.

So Ryan if you are reading it, firstly next year, you better get your ass out of excuse making mode and get the start line of the 20 minutes daily (since you flipped it to 20 from 30 after an extensice debate in the fall of 2022). Secondly, you'll really live the user experience. Thirdly, you need to participate in this thread actively, encourage people to run, give them a push, answer questions. Its just gonna make it better if you are an active.

Dev

I'm gonna reply to you, but it's really more for the purposes of the thread. It's probably my first time opening this thread since January. And that's a whole other can of worms.

Here's the short version: I fucked this up, and we're going to do better next year.

The longer version: There were a couple of major failure points for this year's 100/100. Dev, to your point -- yes, I've registered, yes, I've run, no I've never been particularly good at logging, because I suck at logging (you can ask people for whom I've had to do billable hours; you can ask any one of my coaches for me logging workouts; etc. I'm very good at doing the damn thing. I am not good at logging it.)

Now, for the fuckups.

1.) The choice of RSU as the platform. We used RunSignUp for this year primarily because it's free, and I'm familiar with using it for virtual challenge results -- it's what we use for my race directing work. I was under the false impression that, because tally counts are available as a data field, that you'd be able to use that tally field for results.

You're not. And it's not a priority for their devs.

2.) Slowtwitch's content needs took priority over the 100/100. Not to get into the sausage making too much around these parts, but the editorial side of the house is what pays the bills and keeps the lights on around here. Every single piece of content that we publish goes through my hands. I actually post roughly 80% of our stories on behalf of our writers. And we had to do a lot of looking for writers. And, well, I also had to write a lot. It's not an excuse -- it's just a fact -- I spent almost all my ST time on that work. It's one of the reasons why the podcast took a hiatus -- Eric and I just have not had time to connect at times that work.

3.) I prioritized other things. Winter is very busy for us. Kelly worked almost 3500 hours last year (do that math, it's not pretty), spent 91 nights in Marriott properties, and went from zero to gold status on Delta without really using any "tricks" to get there beyond flight segments and MQDs. So I made sure that we took time to do stuff as a family. We went to Utah in January to ski. Ivy ski races and so I'm doing two hours of driving every Saturday and Sunday to bring her to practice. I've been SkiMo'ing (I'm probably better at that than I am at triathlon, if we're honest). I'm building scaffolding to repair multiple logs on the house. And ST is only one of the things I do to make a living.

It's a very long way of saying that I completely checked out on 100/100.

What my plan for 2024-2025 looks like is as follows:

• Hire someone to our team to be focused on the 100/100 community management side. That might even be you, Dev.
• We're going to likely host this on Strava or Wahoo's platform.
• Find a run brand to partner with on prizes / raffles.

I'm sorry that we fucked this up this year. All we can do is try to be better.

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Editor-in-Chief, Slowtwitch.com | Twitter

Hey Ryan, firstly I totally get the priority of focusing on what pays the bills.I literally have endless points of conflict with staff at my own company when they lose sight of what is getting us to revenue versus what people my THINK is important. The most important thing is keeping the lights on and for this we are all thankful that you are keeping the lights on in this place. Thanks for coming in and explaining. Transitioning an existing organization to a new era is very very hard. It is why most company acquisitions don't work out in the long term. I think many of us are here to help in our small way to enable the transition from Dan theme and culture to Eric theme and culture, as we have vested interest in the platform being healthy as much as we all like to complain :-)

Let me see if I can contribute for the community engagement side. My hands are somewhat full with my company repsonsibilities and just getting to start lines of workouts are a challenge (last night I got home at 8 pm and chatted wiht my wife on daily catch up till 9 pm and then I bagged my night workout which I really should have sucked up and done as Oceanside 70.3 is weeks away). Having said that, I believe I ran 83 times in both the Eric "early 100/100" and the Ryan "late 100" so I advanced my running somewhat and now feel that I should not have to break into a walk at Oceanside so at the tiny of scale of this one participant the imperfect version was better than sitting on my ass. The irony is with the challenge complete last night I skipped my workout. If the challenge was on, I would have likely sucked it up

Ryan-

I know I can be, and have been a bit of an ass... But... I echo Devs sentiments. I appreciate the transparency, now. I do wish we could have had it during the challenge; even just to know that it wasn't changing this year... But, would be better next.

But, I've been managing large projects for a very long time. I get that sometimes priorities are a thing...and, something gets starved by all priority queues. That's just life in the real world of limited time, money, and people. If you arent in AI like Dev (where they just print more money, or create a new chat bot when they need something done), then eventually something runs out.

Thank you for coming on now and telling us the back story. It does make a difference.

I'm a big fan of this challenge since I first joined it 5 or 6 years ago. I have always tried to act as some kind of informal ambassador, and am willing to do what I can to keep this alive, make it better, etc, in the future.

I would nominate Tom as 2024/2025 challenge head instigator/coach/motivator.

And I sympathize with Ryan on all the donkey work to keep things running. Interestingly when you are under the hood trying to operationalize anything AI all the software engineering, IT work and data wrangling and data base headaches is what bogs down from any AI magic work like it is "supposed" to work in labs.

In any case I had one of my best 45 min runs since last fall after swimming today and the challenge with all the imperfections adds up to making running enjoyable on days that things work.

Yeah---I design military aircraft for a living. I can trounce anyone's donkey work that bogs down real work, many times over with all the crap that goes into making metal magically float in the air.

I work for one of those airplane companies, and I thought everything up in the air is carbon fiber now? I guess there's still a lot of metal on the inside?

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

  Most of what we do are military commercial derived aircraft modifications. Gulfstream G550, Bombardier global express 6500 / 7500, dassault falcon 2000, Boeing 707s, 737s...also countless turboprops: beechcraft ka 350s, Lockheed p-3s, c130s, and many more. Plenty of metal craft out there, still.

Composite mods are a whole 'nuther thing.

As a lowly 2.5-year participant, I have few cares about the logging format. I'll continue to play along as long as its not too arduous.

I don't really do social media. I log my runs with no expectation of interaction (here, or anywhere). Nonetheless, I quietly observe the ongoings of my "competitors" and try to internalize: their pace, their mileage. My mileage doesn't always come easy. I am sure theirs doesn't either. It's a weird sense of community for an introspective person. I did appreciate the one year the "top" runners were profiled on a main page article. How are folks grinding it out? What amazing places are they doing it in? Or miserable situations? What are the challenges they are overcoming to get it done? That really humanized the whole thing for me. It's scored like a race on the current platform, which provides some motivation I suppose. But if there was a way we could focus on the gains of this endeavor, I think that would be a big win. -AGW

How do you figure the ".5" part? Did you drop out halfway through? Start late? Achieve only half of your goal? I don't think this is a thing you can DNF, really; you just stop and that equals "finished"

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

First off, appreciate the post with detailed explanations, a bit of the underrated mea culpa, and a whole lot of very relatable
"life is extraordinarily busy and I missed a few things" stuff.

Definitely missed the total numbers of runs feature this year. And the medal rankings. I take my motivation, incremental as it may be, where I can get it, and definitely enjoyed those features. Glad y'all are performing your post hoc analusis, and thinking through improvements/changes for next year.

Lastly, glad it was available for this year, and thanks for the work that was put it by the multitude responsible. See you next year.

Cheers,
Lanceman

Although the 100/100s are long past now, my 5K (minimum)-per-day streak which started 12/31/2023 (New Years Eve, morning) has reached the 100-day milestone

Honestly, one of the biggest reasons I'm still going is because the math is so easy LOL

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin