Everything is way too disorganized now. If I log in through active.com then it's basically impossible to find the old forums page unless I type in coolrunning.com in my browser's URL box. Maybe they bought coolrunning to kill it off or something...
Also, there just are not any people left hanging around anymore it seems. If you want to have an active group of users enjoying a website, you need to offer something good to them or something of value. The old coolrunning had a good community to discuss things, now the forums are close to an uninhabited wasteland. I am like a zombie returning to the old hangout just out of habit (see Romero's Dawn of the Dead).
Also, one of the big draws of the old coolrunning was the C25K plan that was free and all the newbies supporting each other to get through it. It's almost like online music mp3's. Once people get used to getting it for free, it's awful hard to turn around and try to charge them for it. Active could do better by keeping C25K for free but putting sponsored advertising or even unsponsored advertising for 5k races in the readers' area. Give them the plan and then plant the idea of running a 5k in their head. They would make money from the online registration.
If you want to use the C25K schedule, I think it's still free and readily accessible here:
http://www.coolrunning.com/engine/2/2_3/181.shtml I think what active is charging for is some type of download / upload. Not having used the pgm myself, I'm not sure what the prior format was, although I had the impression most people just used the schedule.
Active seems to have fixed something in the last few days. I can't use my regular browser still, so I just have this browser set to open to Basic Training forum, and it seems to do that now. A few days ago, I still had to click a couple different places to get there.
Also, I seem able to log in on 1st try now, rather than multiple tries across several days. Hmmm, very effective security to keep people from your site. And I can actually post. Now if they could just get the pages to load faster and do something about this jumpy posting screen and not forget that I'm logged in, it might make it more habitable. But I think many people are long gone.
Unfortunately, I think active took too long to get it to the point where people could get in - about 4 wks after CR as we knew it was taken down. I've hung around here since there's still parts of occasional threads of interest and not that much on any of the other sites - at least no threads that really interest me. Others may vary in what they're interested in. (I primarily posted in some other boards )
