Founder Updates•Jan. 1, 2021, 2:37 a.m. • 64
2020. The Craziest Year In Review
2020 Is Over...!!
When this year began I was in Hawaii, fortunate enough to be on a nice trip with my girlfriend and her family. I remember being stressed about making sure I was ready for the upcoming year of 2020 and feeling a bit behind schedule with things. Of course I had no idea that the world was about to change in 2 short months and that everything I thought I was preparing for would be cancelled, changed or gone forever.
I feel truly devastated that Covid-19 has killed well over a quarter million Americans, that the pandemic changed so much and hurt so many in this country and world. It also sucks that 2020 was probably the most tumultuous year (even without the pandemic) that most young-ish people have ever experienced on this planet. Still, despite all of this craziness, I can't help but feel incredibly lucky. I feel like I really got a ton of time to reflect because of Covid and it prevented my from making decisions that could have lead Trackster, our users and team astray from our mission. Instead, I feel like I was able to take the proverbial step back and see how things were changing. Not just in running, not just in software, but everywhere.. things are... different.
I feel much more confident on this year's December 31st that Trackster is in a great position to help people and add real, strong value to the world because of this change in perspective. I want to say thank you to my family, my girlfriend Tia, the homie and brains behind Trackster content - Joe Yuengert, all of the Talking While Running guests and everyone else who is part of the Trackster community. THANK YOU!!!
2020 - By the numbers
In high school my wonderful and thorough coach used to do a blog post at the end of every season that would breakdown and summarize the highs and lows of the past few months.
Coach Lawrence, or Coach Law as he was referred to amongst the ranks, would also include a section called 'By The Numbers' that would simply be a list of numbers followed by a sentence describing what each of the numbers represented.
I'm going to copy his format here and throw out some numbers for Trackster in the past 365 days... enjoy and happy new year! (Read Coach L's 2013 state champ 'by the numbers' here)
245,301 - the total number of miles posted by athletes on Trackster in 2020
61,768 - the total number of training posts on Trackster in 2020
3.97 (mi) - the average distance of a training post on Trackster this year
3 - the number of times the Trackster server completely crashed this year (🤞 that next year this is 0!)
2 - the number of bears spotted outside the Trackster HQ office this summer (in Big Sky, MT during quarantine)
5 - the number of activity types now supported on Trackster (run, bike, swim, elliptical, other)
6 - the number of GPS recording options supported on Trackster (iOS, Android, Apple Watch Trackster apps + Garmin, Polar, Suunto integrations)
989 (mi) - the number of miles I personally ran this year (more than 2019 but no where near my highest... to 2021!)
10 - the number of iOS updates released this year
0 - the amount of dollars in venture capital / angel investments Trackster has taken
1,445,100,200 - number of cups of coffee consumed while working on Trackster in the past 365
2 - the number of months until Coros GPS support is released on Trackster (woohoo!)
41 - the number of athletes on our (unbiased) favorite team (kansas state)!
71 - the number of Zoom calls with coaches, online coaching businesses and athletes during quarantine.
17 - the number of shoe brands supported on Trackster. (For athletes to attach to training posts & track mileage/wear)
6 - the number of continents with active Trackster users
599 - the most hours that any athlete on Trackster posted this year (avg of 1.6 hours of running / day)
5217 (mi) - the most miles that any athlete on Trackster posted this year (avg of 14.29 miles / day)
0 - the number of times we believed that Trackster's mission to improve the world by connecting athletes and coaches through training was not worthwhile.