Runner Insight

I showed you my videos from the half marathon last week, but here’s a couple of other videos on the Missoula Marathon and Half Marathon last weekend.

The Half Marathon Route – Beautiful Course!

Here’s a great video of the 2009 Missoula Marathon – Nicely done! The Marathoners have black bibs with white numbers…the Half Marathoners have red bibs with black numbers.
Be sure to watch at the 6:58 mark, right behind the family of 3 crossing the finish line and the gal in the yellow shirt (Hi Tonya!), you can see me in a blue tank top and yellow shorts with my white cane – just for a second or so, so look fast…or you’ll have to back up to see it!

I’m working on a blog post about my experience with the half marathon last weekend, but it’s not quite done yet…hopefully it’ll be ready to post for later this week! Stay Tuned!

How ’bout it?
-Vision Runner

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Here we are at the end of an amazing and life-changing 2008. I thought I would take this opportunity to thank all of you: my loyal readers from the beginning four months ago, the ones that have joined us en route, and to thank and welcome all the new friends that have joined us from Twitter and MySpace and other avenues more recently. We appreciate you all, and truly hope that all of you are getting as much from this blog as we are.

I’ve had the website/blog up for four months now, with about 60 posts in those four months, and readership is continuing to grow! You’ve been hearing from me, so now I’d like to hear from you. What do you like about the website? What would you like to see more of? Is there something you would like us to do that we are not currently doing? If so, please leave us a comment. We want this website to be a place where you can come to be inspired, or even to have a laugh or two. We truly want to make your time at the website well worth spending here. So with that in mind, if there is anything we are doing right, please let us know, and if you want to see something else or even if there is something that we’re doing that you want more of, tell us that too! It would be cool to have enough feedback to put up a great testimonial page with written and photo and video testimonials from our readers! In fact, since I just thought of that … why not do it? I’ll tell you what. We’ll look into setting up a way and a place online for our readers to upload content…we’ll keep you informed, and let you know once we figure it out. In the meantime, use the comment form, and be sure to participate in our Top Ten commenting contest (explained below and on this recent Monday’s post).

I am absolutely having a blast writing the posts and making the videos. The videos have been especially fun for me, as I’ve always enjoyed the visual arts. It’s obviously harder now for me, with my vision issues, but I still love doing them, and I just have to ask for help from my lovely assistant and editor now and again.

As a recap of 2008, I started this blog at the end of August/beginning of September, with a desire to share my passion for running and inspiration for making great things happen in life. We’ve personally seen any number of miracles happen this year on several fronts, including in our health, our relationships, our standard of living, and spiritually. We’ve learned to expect great things to happen, and it is producing magic and miracles for us. We’ve got even greater goals to manifest this year, and I’m expecting huge, major breakthroughs now that we’ve cleared the way with some grace and spiritual healing. We’ve recently written and adopted the philosophy of Be Here, Be Open, Surrender and Allow…and it’s working. Great things are coming.

Once I started this blog, we quickly came to the conclusion that three times a week would be a good middle ground for the number of new posts I could come up with. More than that, and it would just be too much; less than that, and I wouldn’t be able to create a good connection with you. Although I have had multiple requests to publish new content every day, that’s probably not going to happen. Three times a week seems to be a good balance.

In order to make things more interactive, we held a Halloween contest, with several interesting submissions, and the winner’s true Halloween story about a Cowboy and a Princess was given the place of honor as our blog post on Halloween. We’re looking forward to even more great submissions for the contest next year.

I wrote a book this year, a simple little free downloadable eBook that’s available to everyone. It’s called “Gifts For Runners – More Than 50 Unique and Creative Gifts For The Runner In Your Life” We got this out just before Thanksgiving to satisfy the demand from holiday shoppers as non-runners looking for great gift ideas for the runner in their life. And the best part of the book is that there are easy links to online resources to see pictures and descriptions of the items mentioned, and some can even be ordered online, directly from the link.

As straight-forward as running is, it seems as though the whole psychology of running is kind of a mystery to the non-runner. And as my partner (still a non-runner…so far …diabolical grin) is wont to say “Why would I want to run unless someone was chasing me?” So, thanks to the non-runners and quite a few runners as well, we’ve had over 60 downloads of the free eBook in the past month, and it’s still available by filling in the form on the sidebar. And just to let you know, the gift ideas are not just for the Christmas season; they can be used all year long, for your runner’s birthday, anniversary, Easter, Valentine’s Day, Halloween, etc. So if you haven’t downloaded your free copy yet, you should do so immediately, if not sooner

And oh yeah, don’t want to forget to tell you, I’m working on another book that will be done sometime this year (2009) about my training as a legally blind runner to run in my first marathon. So watch for it!

We had a great review of our website come from Traxee.com, a website designed specifically for women runners. So thanks a bunch to them. They also helped to promote our give-away of the eBook, “Gifts For Runners” as did the blogsite RunWithDogs.com. So thanks to them as well.

We published a few articles online, as well as sent out a press release about the launch of the RunnerInsight.com website, so we’re getting the word out there, slowly but surely.

We set up a MySpace page this fall, and recently joined Twitter, so you can follow me on those sites as well. And Twitter is great for more frequent short updates of what I’m doing off and on through out the day.

We’ve had some great comments on the blog posts, and look forward to even more this year. Right now we’re looking to define the Top Ten Runner Insight Blog Posts of 2008, so vote for your favorites by leaving comments on your top ten favorite posts. Every comment left between now and Jan 30th will be entered into a random drawing for a fabulous prize. See all the details in our Monday December 29th post.

Once again thanks for coming back to check out the new content, and re-reading the old. And thanks for telling all your friends! Remember if you click on any of the links at RunnerInsight.com and end up getting something from that linked site, we get a small percentage to help support some of the costs of running this blog. Hey, every little bit helps. And don’t forget that you can subscribe to all the new posts on the blog via email or RSS feed absolutely free…There’s a spot to do that at the top of the sidebar

Okay. I guess that’s it for now, but I’m here to tell you that I’m looking forward to 2009 being even better with all new content and more exciting contests and some fabulous surprises, too!
Thanks again…We appreciate you!

How ‘bout it?

-Vision Runner

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