Coolrunning and Active.com

I've kept my running log at coolrunning.com since I started running, oh way back in '05. It was simple. It worked well.

Until sometime around November 2007. When Cool Running decided to do merge with active.com.

All Cool Running customers were instructed to "click here" to merge your log with Active.

I clicked.

And promptly lost my running log. And apparently a lot of other people did, too.

I worked with Active.com for many—fruitless, I might add—weeks to solve the problem. Finally, I started following the Disgruntled Cool Running discussion on Active. There are a LOT of unhappy people who, like me, thought our running logs were gone forever. Until one exceptionally helpful discussion board member posted a "backdoor" url to retrieve your running log—and it worked!

And then someone else suggested a terrific site to keep your running log at, since Active.com is a NIGHTMARE to log into, never mind try to import data, or use for anything.

And what is this terrific site? It's RunningAhead. It imported my data—which I felt like a criminal trying to retrieve—flawlessly. And it has this handy little piece of code to display my weekly activities (running/swimming/biking/ whateverIwant), which keeps me humble, and honest, all at the same time. See? it's posted right over there-------->

Kudos to Eric at RunningAhead. Well done.

And Active? Well, it's more of a nightmare now than ever. I just tried to register for the National Half-Marathon and it is forcing me to login, but will not retrieve my name or any other info. So I'm going to have to resort to registering by mail.

Sheesh.