Penultimate

Eric S.

I never expected to do this. Last year, when I told our esteemed president, Glen W.,  "I want to get more involved again with the club this year." I was thinking more along the lines of organizing a happy hour or something."  He asked me to get the blog going. The key in my accepting the position was his rigid parameters: "Make it whatever you want it to be."

I've tried to run the blog with little input from myself. I've wanted it to be about the club - running, members and events. In order to track visits, I installed a counter, but I never looked at again after that. I was more interested in creating something of quality that reflected the club. My thought was that if it was a good blog, people would read it and enjoy it. Who needs numbers when you can have supportive comments?

So it's been a great blog. I've learned a lot... about running, training, the people in the club, and I even got inspired to start cooking! Thanks to everyone that submitted posts, including our regulars and not so regulars, like Ted The Runner (and no, it was never me). A special shout-out goes to Ed A. who was very helpful with proofreading articles and catching grammar, typos, and more than a few punctuation errors that I missed.

Unfortunately, though, after my moving to Canada in the second half of the year, I've unfortunately felt a growing disconnect with the club. It was inevitable, really. There are more and more names that I see on the Flyers' website that I don't know, and there are many events and races that I don't attend or participate in. As the term came to an end, I decided it was appropriate for me to move on.

And that leaves me here. But this won't be my last post. My next one will be, and it'll be reflective of us - the club -  than me or any single member or event. It will be a good post on which to leave the past year.

And then what?

David K.

Back in April of last year, I had considered asking Dave K. to be Co-Blogmaster with me. He of course doesn't know this, because I never asked. I couldn't figure out how the duties would be divided up between asking people to blog, creating the schedule, sending out reminders, doing the layout, editing the content, adding links and images, etc. There was a lot to do and I wanted some help, but I felt like coordinating the effort would be more of a hassle than it was worth, so I continued to go at it alone.

But Dave stood out from the other bloggers. His posts were always early. They always came with photos attached, or at least links to photos on the web. He included suggested links to other online articles. Frankly, he was a Blogmaster's dream come true. He made it so easy.

So at the end of the year, shortly after I gave notice that I wasn't about to continue on with the blog to Glen, I mentioned it to Dave via e-mail, adding in parentheses "(interested?)".

Lucky for us, Dave followed those parentheses up with Glen, and will be taking the reins of the blog in the next couple of weeks. His last post was self-published to the blog for practice. And if the quality of his submissions in the past are any indication of the future, the Flyers' Blog is only going to improve throughout the course of this year. Best of luck, Dave.

All my best to the Flyers and the blog. I encourage you to write and get your opinions, stories, and ideas out to the rest of us.

Go Flyers! - Eric S., Soon-to-be Ex-Blogmaster.