Wednesday, July 29, 2015

When I launched this website twenty-four days ago I had no idea what to expect.  I had only ever done my own website once before, several years ago at www.vincepavic.blogspot.com.  However, this has been different in the sense that I have created content I never created before, and I only posted back then when it was convenient for me.  Now I post daily and I know that I have a loyal following of readers.  When I decided to do the site, I had to learn a lot, and did a lot of reading and research to make sure I would put something out on the web that made sense.  I hoped to attract visitors and moreover, repeat visitors.  I still have a lot to learn  but Wordpress makes the site navigation pretty easy.  Buying a domain and then creating the pages took some doing, but here I am.  And here it is.

So far this has been fun.  I truly enjoy writing and it's been made more enjoyable by the fact that I have a steady flow of readers that have visited the site and who read my daily posts.  Admittedly some days are better than others, but that's the case with anything.  It's certainly been the case with training and running as a whole.  You roll with it, and when you have a bad day you look to improve the next day.  I truly believe if you do that with anything you'll be successful.  One of the best things about this site is the variety of plugins that are available.  You'll notice the email sign up to the right of the page?  That's a plugin.  I use Mail Chimp.  The Countdown clock?  That's also a plugin.  One of the coolest plugins I have is the "count by day" plugin.  It tells me how many visitors I've had daily and monthly along with what country they are in.  I have no way of knowing who the visitors are.  I only get the total numbers and country origin, along with what people are reading.  For instance, today 4 people read my post The Mile in Front of You  from earlier this week.  If you've been reading, you know that recently I've been fascinated with numbers.  So here's some more...

This morning I had two big number milestones.  While out on my run, which was my fourth interval run of my training thus far, I passed last year's annual mileage total of 549.2 miles.  When I completed the 6.25 miles it put me at 549.4 miles for 2015.  Obviously I'm happy about this.  It puts me on pace to possibly reach the elusive 1,000 mile year I've been after for a long time.  Still, I'll need a little luck and continued health to get there, but with five months remaining in the year, I have reason to be encouraged.

More importantly for today, sometime just before 8:00 a.m. I surpassed 1,000 visitors to this site since its official launch just twenty-four days ago.  I am in awe of you and so thankful for you, the reader.  It is you that motivates me and keeps me going on a day-to-day basis throughout this process.  And that's really what a marathon training period is; a process.  It's about working hard to make small incremental improvements and get stronger on a schedule that hopefully peaks sometime around the end of week 16.  It's never easy, and rarely is it a lot of fun.  It's a lot of work and a ton of time investment.  But having you along for the ride has made it more worthwhile.  It's like having 1,000 consciences watching me and giving me the strength to continue to plug away toward my goals.  Today's run was difficult like all interval days are.  They're especially hard when you're out on the track alone.  But when I see 1,000 visitors at least somewhat interested in reading about what I have to say, I don't feel alone.  You rock, whoever you are, and wherever you are from!  From the bottom of my heart, THANK YOU!!!  I cannot thank you nearly enough.

Run on...