June 2003 BT

This site was a significant change from the one in 2002.  There was a very crude Frontpage-generated discussion (think primitive nested view).  I got a few editors on-board (Scott who eventually would write the Beginner 1/2 and Full IM plans).  My mom did her first triathlon at age 59.  Freddy came on board to write too...he didn't write lengthy peices, but it was consistent with a great motivational theme.  This version of the site pretty much set the editorial style for years.

This is also the time that we installed our current discussion board.  I eventually contracted the programmer who created the free ASP forum software to start some training logs. 

June 2003 BT

We officially moved from mindbodysoul3.tripod.com to beginnertriathlete.com.  Why?  Well, back in that summer, my tripod account exceeded it's bandwidth a few times a week resulting in several hours of downtime.  I remember exactly where I was - at lunchtime in my cube.  I freaked-out.  There wasn't even a forum or training logs.  I remember in the chem lab at work I had a pad of paper listing domains.  I initially wanted mindbodysoul but that and several variants were taken.  I took a step back and asked: "Well, what is this site really about?"  Beginner Triathletes.  The rest is history.

Today at BT

• We had to ax the 'Random Inspires' block of the BT Blogger.  IT was too CPU intensive and made the site hiccup too much.

• We are also axing the 'nested view' - very few people use it but when they do on large threads, it hobbles the site.  Instead of spending a lot of time making it efficient for a very small fraction of users, we are doing away with it.

• Spent some time discussing the mobile site and the updates being done to it.

• Our new uploader for Garmin, Polar, Timex, Swimsense, TP is still being tested but it's getting very close.

Since we will begin work on the new site hopefully in a week, we want the current one running as smooth as we can since all development on it will stop...a lot of the forum issues we have had for awhile but never addressed.

Off day.  Spent most of the day cleaning out the garage to accommodate the car for winter.

Today at BT

Most of the morning was spent in discussion on what the new BT hompage should be vs what it is now vs what it was in the past.  There was also a lot of discussions on our 'Races' page and to what extent RD's should be able to claim/edit their races and how we would provide a 'race management' center for this.

We also removed the 'Nested' thread view from the forums as it was still causing timeouts and sever errors.  Plus hardly anyone uses it anyways.

November 2002 BT (2nd edition)

9 months after the very first BT website (mindbodysoul3.tripod.com) I updated it with a lot more information.  This was also when we added our 'Original Sprint 13 Week' plan.  I still kind of remember working on this site.  Getting the left and right navigation and the whole look took me awhile.  We also had a 'discussion' area on the site.  It wasn't this forum but a MS Frontpage ASP generated discussion.  Just simple nested views. 

This was also the time that I did my web community work at DMOZ.org as an editor for the 'triathlon' area.  This was pre-Google if I remember.  At least before Google was mainstream.  If you wanted a website listed and crawled, you submitted it to this index and several search engines used that index to serve results (Google did initially).  There was no editor for 'triathlon' so I became an editor.  I was fair and balanced even though I had an ulterior motive for getting BT listed.  I worked that for a few years, did a lot of work on the weekends adding and categorizing websites for 'triathlon'.

DMOZ was a good experience as it got me quickly familiarized with every triathlon website.  I felt like as was playing a direct role in shaping the web in 2002.  The web was just a toddler then...beginning to get mainstream.

MY THOUGHTS - Keystone XL Oil Pipeline
Ummm...that should have been a no brainer.  Our economy runs on oil.  I thought we wanted more domestic oil instead of the politically sensitive overseas oil?  Canada shipping it to us and building the pipeline.  What a nice partner.  To all of the 'no' people:  I would like them to refrain from driving their cars.  They cannot buy anything that has plastic in it.  Likewise, shut of the gas from your house and fire up the nice clean-burning wood fireplace.  Try living like this for a few weeks.  I think most people don't even realize just 'how much' comes from oil.  The US needs oil, the more closer to home it is, the better.  There is a whole lot of hypocrisy on this issue.  I'm a huge environmentalist, but at the moment, oil drives our economy...literally. 

The first Pre-BT website. - February 2002

I have all the BT websites open on my desktop next to the real one.  Trying to get inspiration for the grand redesign.  Trying to remember 'back then' and what my thoughts were.

Does anybody remember this site?  This was the first.  The pages are linked at the bottom...more of an 'ode to my first triathlon' than anything else.  This was the time when personal websites were starting to popup, but there were no sites that made it for you - you still needed some basic coding experience.  I grabbed a book at my library and got Frontpage from Microsoft.  The only question was 'do I publish a site on homebrewing or my first triathlon?' - You know what I chose. 

The pages at the bottom still work, the 'LIFE' link doesn't work.  This was actually 'mindbodysould3.tripod.com' - when tripod was a big sitebuilder.  If I remember, this was a free site so they gave me a subdomain and put banner on the site.

This was definitely a great learning experience.  I continued to use Frontpage through early 2004 then I started paying our first contract programmer who remains with us to this day.

This pre-edition of BT didn't have any writers at the time, I only put up a few pages of various content...mostly inspirational stuff.