Hi folks,

My name is Dave Camire and I am one of the co-founders of Cool Running. Kevin Molloy and I started this business almost thirteen years ago and our mission has been to supply the best information and tools available and offer a friendly environment to our users.

For those of you who have been with us from the beginning, you have witnessed the enormous changes and growth in our site. I fondly remember our first month of operation we received 200 hits and we were thrilled. During our busiest month this year we received over 89 million hits and the site welcomed over 2.3 million visitors. Now that's growth!

However with growth comes challenges and one of ours was supporting an infrastructure that would keep pace with the enormous amount of users we were servicing. Kevin performed miracles by keeping the CR server operational despite the increased load; however band aids will only carry you so far.

By the end of 2006 we were frequently being forced to reboot our system. This often took place in the early morning hours so hopefully it was not obvious when our site was down. Our running logs as designed were also unable to handle the load. We also knew the existing software would not handle many of the features users were requesting on a regular basis.

So with our server maxed, our software prehistoric and our registration system broken we knew it would be impossible to continue the status quo. So with the help of the Active engineering team we embarked on an ambitious project to fix it. BTW both Kevin and I are still heavily involved with Cool Running. I serve as the senior editor of the site and Kevin is a frequent technical consultant. I feel strongly that we (Cool Running and Active) have not abandoned our original mission.

This brings us to today. Our goal was to establish the most stable, feature rich, robust community and tools for our community. Overall the transition went well, but we all fully recognize that there are serious issues that need to be addressed. We are listening to all the feedback and working hard to respond with solutions.

I would like to ask that you just give us a chance. Rest assured there are many folks at CR and Active that worked nights and weekends to manage the transition and are now redoubling efforts to get folks to a good place. I sincerely hope that you will stick with us and show your continued support as we work through this transition.

Thanks for listening,

Dave Camire
Co-founder
www.coolrunning.com