Meg and Stealth, thank you for all your work. Meg I can't believe you're doing this alone; I hope you get help soon! You are doing a great job and anybody who has the nerve to gripe about a VOLUNTEER doing tons of free work deserves, at least, shinsplints, plus maybe plantar fasciitis.

Also, everybody pls pay for the premium subscription; a measly $10 annually is hardly a stretch, not even a single month of Amazon Prime.

As it is now, there are runners who have reached (or are just about to reach) half of their yearly goal (over two months early). Sandbagging or having a great year? Penalize or reward? If it was the end of the year this would be penalized, but now it is rewarded. Which should it be?

You are assuming that there aren't discussions happening with runners who are high to goal. One year, we had a runner in the game who planned on taking two months off in the fall because they were going to be travelling. They took a Leave of Absence in the fall (same procedure as going on IR). Apologies but I can't recall when they hit their goal for the year but I think it was in December. In the spring, it looked like they could smash their goal. Sometimes it is runners who are coming off injuries and set a conservative goal as they heal up. I don't know if you've dealt with an injury before, but sometimes you can't predict how recovery will go and that can make goal setting difficult as well. In June, runners take stock of where they are year to goal. And there are runners every year I contact to make sure that change is being made, both up or down. There is more to the goals sometimes than you see.

Instead of a suggestion, can I ask a question? Why don't we force everyone who is playing this game to have a public log? It would add transparency to a lot of these situations perhaps, but given what the mods have said before, I am sure there is a reason for this.

Instead of a suggestion, can I ask a question? Why don't we force everyone who is playing this game to have a public log? It would add transparency to a lot of these situations perhaps, but given what the mods have said before, I am sure there is a reason for this.

But would this actually make a difference? Would it then become necessary for everyone to use Strava (or similar) that downloads data direct to this site? I currently manually input my runs here as I'm using the free version of mapmyrun that doesn't have a data transfer facility - how would you tell from my log whether I'd actually run the logged miles?

The game operates very much on an honor basis, from setting our target mileage to accurately logging what we do. Yes, there are rules that have developed over the years to keep the game running fairly smoothly, but really these are more like guidelines and depend upon the participants following them voluntarily rather than being enforced by admins or team captains.

As it is, the number of players participating in this annual game has decreased steadily and I personally don't think that forcing additional requirements on participants would attract more runners to take part.

 

But would this actually make a difference? Would it then become necessary for everyone to use Strava (or similar) that downloads data direct to this site? I currently manually input my runs here as I'm using the free version of mapmyrun that doesn't have a data transfer facility - how would you tell from my log whether I'd actually run the logged miles?

 

 

No. I don't think the question/comment was raised to ensure proof of the run, just to be able to see what people are actually doing on a daily basis.

I would prefer it all to be public and updated daily (including and especially in the playoffs) because I think that makes things more interesting and fun. It's a game but also a competition - part of any competition is seeing what your opponents are doing in real time. But I imagine to your other point, we'd more likely lose people who want to stay private for whatever reason, than gain people.

Just want to add my appreciation to the Mods for running this game!

Some further details on the admin side that Stealth wrote up....

The first of most years, there is a glitch that causes the first week or two results to not run or run early. All we can do is notify Eric.

After the next year's game is set up, no one can reenter the create/modify game console without it changing all dates and times of posting deadlines and results. If you go back and try to reenter it yourself, the errors can multiply. Eric must do fixes when that occurs.

The deadline for joining next year's game is set by early to mid November. We post dates and times all over the current forum as well as multiple times in the general running forum. If a runner misses signups for either team or individual, they cannot be added manually.