This year’s Boston weather is perfect for running in my books. 
Too bad about Meb’s race - muscle cramp or something?
Happy that Tatyana McFadden won her third Boston!
I would have been so miserable in that weather- cold rain. Being out there for so long at the start… I know it is not a problem for others, but it would have been my nightmare. Besides that, it was windy.
Oh, I missed that part. I can deal with cold and rain when I run (I run very hot), but wind would not make me happy.
Darn, the Cod division sounded like fun. Congrats to the Baker clan!
Our core group is around 12 women - not everyone runs on the same days with the exception of Saturdays when usually we are all able to get there. I think we have around 8 for the race. It’s a smaller local race so it will be hard to lose track of each other. Course is very, very hilly though and I haven’t been doing that great on the hills. I’ll skip TRX on Thursday and only do around 4 Thursday morning. Some of the women are very serious about it - I’m just trying to treat it like another training run.
Strength workout yesterday afternoon and walk at the park this morning.
Cold, nasty spring day in New England. 45 degrees. Hard rain. Basement cold (54 degrees). So I hopped on the dreaded Airdyne for a 5 miler and lost myself in an iPod playlist. Luck of the shuffle draw brought up the perfect song for pedalling the dreaded Airdyne with the background of a hard rain. From 1963:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-H2Vvfg0d3k
Set my all-time fastest time for a 5-mile. Never even looked at the speed. Just pedalled.
Did any of you see the battle for the women’s division? After 26 miles…a sprint. http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/04/20/caroline_rotich_of_kenya_wins_the_boston_marathon_in_dramatic_finale_lelisa.html
That’s CRAZY! To win it and to come in second!
I know! It is totally insane. This turned into a sprint race at the end of 26 miles.
I watched a lot of the race on my computer at work. The women’s finish was incredible, and I was proud of Brooks runner Desi Davila who finished 4th. My favorite moment was when Meb grabbed the hand of the female elite runner who was finishing next to him as they crossed the finish line (women started earlier than the men).
6 mile day for me (2 and 4). I have a business trip to Florida later in the week and I’ll run there, but it might be hard to get anything long in.
Finally, after months of planning, hours of revisions and agonizing over details, the website for my personal training business is up. Under the rules for CC I can’t self advertise and post the web address as an active link but if one were to enter a .com address in their browser that starts with odysseystrength you might stumble your way onto my website :). If anyone happens to do so, I would certainly be interested in your comments about the design. It’s a work in progress and I would love to get feedback on likes and dislikes.
Nice site! Easily navigatable on my iPhone. Will do a Win8 and Win7 testing tonight.
I think it looks really good, Michael,
Very nice site. Easy to navigate on my iPad. I think a cc boot camp is in order! Can we get a volume discount?
Thank you , all. And yes sabaray, let’s have that boot camp! I’m actually going to try to build my outdoor fitness playground by Memorial Day weekend and then have a fitness bbq. How many cargo net climbs and tractor tire flips equal a cheeseburger
Michael, your site passed the Win7/IE 11 test with flying colors!
Looks pretty nice! I wish you were in my area!
Couple of comments, these are all minor things:
- the copyright at the bottom has a a typo, it says "© dysseystrength"
- I think you are right on the edge of too many words on your home page. On my Android phone it shows as a pretty big wall of text.
- On the home page under the "Functional Movement Assessment and Training" section, that picture is pushed down and doesn't line up with the other two pictures. And the text doesn't seem to wrap properly - there is plenty of room for "avoid" to be on the same line as "training to eliminate and "
- you have a tennis player in your logo, i don't think you mention tennis anywhere... maybe a runner or cyclist would be more on point?
- you list your certs which is nice; but maybe it would be good to have something explaining why certs are important and why those are good ones, or what you have to do to get them? Otherwise to me they don't really tell me much. You don't really have anything else that tells me what makes you qualified to be a personal trainer.
- the pictures on the about page at the top are different sizes. To me this looks sloppy, I suspect most people won't notice.
- on the Services page, as the picture at the top rotates, the contact popup keeps growing from the bottom. Personally I find this kind of activity a bit annoying.
- So Many Capital Letters in the Descriptive Text on The Services Page, Is It Really Necessary to Capitalize Almost Every Single Word? It's a Little Jolting to the Eye in My Opinion.
- Your prices are cheap based on what trainers are charging in my area (eastern MA outside of Boston)
- Do you offer sessions longer than 1 hour? If so work it in somewhere.
- Your prices in each section are the same, so do they need to be repeated three times? I'm going back and forth on this.
- On my Android phone, the price tables don't show up correctly. Instead of a table it just shows up as a single column.
- the map link goes to "1149 Harriett Rd Abington, PA 19006" rather than "1141 Harriett Rd.Huntingdon Valley, PA 19006" like it says on the contact page, although both seem to go to the same location on the map.
- the blog - you clearly put a lot of time and work into the first blog post. Are you going to be willing to maintain this level of effort to update the blog on a regular basis?A lot of personal business sites I have seen with blogs often start off with a flurry of posts, and then tails off quickly to silence as the author runs out of time or things to say. Then site looks abandoned or ignored. What are your plans for the blog? What are you going to discuss? At a minimum I would say you can't limit the blog to things about fitness, it needs to be about you personally.
- blog posts can have more than one category, this one should probably have "TRX" and maybe "Functional" or "Body weight", for example.
- if you google "personal training philadelphia" or "home personal training philadelphia" you (of course!) don't show up yet. What is your marketing plan?
I hope I am not being too picky! Some of this stuff just jumps off the page at me, it’s a curse. Hopefully you find it helpful.
Thank you notrichenough, lots of good suggestions and “catches”. I noticed the same thing about the services page when viewed on my iPhone but my daughter told me it scaled just fine on hers. It’s good to know that there are issues on Droid phones also. I need to have my designer figure that out. Now that the site is up, my next step is to have my designer give me a thorough tutorial in using the Word Press Control Panel so that I can make edits myself. It’s tough (and frustrating) to be so dependent on someone else to make changes for me. I want instant results :)!
The marketing is going to be the tough nut to crack. A friend of mine who has been a trainer for 30 years tells me that a web presence has gotten her little business over the years and that most of her business is the result of networking/referrals from doctors and physical therapists. Another friend, who is about 20 years younger and in the fitness industry earns over $100K/year just from online services he provides. My head could spin from all of this! I suspect I will need to draw on both of their respective experiences and viewpoints.
Another cold, wet, rainy day at the shore, so today’s exercise will be of the scrubbing/vacuuming/spring cleaning variety. (My gym membership here doesn’t kick back in until May 1.)
I watched the Women’s finish at yesterday’s Marathon. Quite a thriller!
Nice site, MNK.
Nice site!! Oh my goodness - I am from Huntingdon Valley (but moved away as a teenager)!!