Our First Birthday!!

Today, this blog is one year old, so time for a look back at this last year of life bouncing around the blogging ether....

Woopie, we made it through the first year. Photo from www.mystuffspace.com

There are now 80 running routes online, plus extra stuff about where to go and how to prepare. I have been trying to add a route a week, which isn't always possible, but it's a goal that I normally manage to make. Again, to make this blog a more useful service to all of you traveling runners out there, please send me your feedback on what I can improve. And specific route suggestions are also always welcome.

And anyone out there that has their own route descriptions to submit, well, just send them to me! There are already 6 guest-written routes among those listed here, for some of the most exotic destinations. Thanks Heather, John and Jessi!

During this first year, there has been a steady climb in visitors: According to Google Analytics, the blog is now getting about 2,000 visits each month, and about 3,000 page-views. A more flattering, but less accurate statistic is provided by www.blogger.com, my blog provider, who says I'm getting over 4,000 page-views a month, which includes a lot of fake visits by Russian spammers. Alas, all bloggers have to put up with this at the moment.

But what else does Google Analytics tell me about you visitors?

• You're looking at an average of 1.6 pages per visit
• The vast majority of you (86%) come from search engines
• 90% of all visitors are new, as opposed to returning visitors. 
• The vast majority of you are Americans, followed by Singaporeans (big surprise for me), then Brits, Germans and people in Hong Kong (another surprise). 
• Popular route locations are Washington, Singapore, Hong Kong, Paris, Miami Beach, Las Vegas, New York, Rome, and San Francisco.
• Between 5 and 10 of you visit using an iPad or other mobile device, and a quarter of you are using a mac
• The great majority of you are using an English browser, but the next most popular languages are German, French and Italian.

I'll keep trying to find and describe interesting places to run as I travel around with my job and the occasional vacation. So bring on year two, and, with it, wishes for lots more great runs for all of us!