IMRA win Golden Spider Award for best website

T runner

Congratulations the Irish Mountain Running Association who beat off among others The RTE Olympics website and the Irish Rugby World Cup site to win best Irish Sports and Leisure website in this years Golden Spider Awards.

The site is built on a huge database of results, maps, photos etc.
e.g Clicking on a runner will show all that runners history of results in races,
with a graphs indicating progress whether uphill or downhill! Clicking on any of these races gives the results of that race,, where you can click on a runner etc etc. hours of endless fun and analysis.

www.imra.ie


The win is no fluke as IMRA has shown vision, dedication and radical thinking in all its activities since it was founded over thirty or so years ago.

IMRA is completely self sufficient raising money for its own Junior and Elite athletes to travel and compete abroad, while still taking care of its lifeblood with races in the most spectacular and beautiful surroundings in Ireland: running as god intended (with shorts and Tshirt on). Races include short hard 20-30 minute races on good trails. Uphill Only races. Race to the summit and back of Irelands highest (rec 71) and Irelands holiest (rec 42) mountains. Long ultra events and challenges like the Wicklow Ultra and The Wicklow Round a challenge to traverse 30 or so peaks in a round of the Wicklow ,ountains in 24 hours.

Last year we had almost 1000 members in our community and with more new trail/hill races scheduled for Connaught this number will increase.

Mountain Running is now a recognised Branch of running by the IAAF (along with T and F, Road, XC).

I think a look at the site will show what hard working people can achieve in our sport with a dedicated selfless community attitude.

Weve come a long way since Irelands first Hill race, when Grainne and (you never remember who was second) raced Slievenamon for the hand of Finn McCool!
P.S Congrats to Boards.ie too: fantastic site, fantastic achievement.

earlyevening

T runner wrote: »

The site is built on a huge database of results, maps, photos etc.
e.g Clicking on a runner will show all that runners history of results in races,
with a graphs indicating progress whether uphill or downhill! Clicking on any of these races gives the results of that race,, where you can click on a runner etc etc. hours of endless fun and analysis.

.

Having done 40 or so hill runs over the last few years I've never seen the "graphs indicating progress". I do love seeing the photos appear a few days after the run. Some of the photos look amazing - enough to get you all hill running in 2009??
Congrats on the website award. Its well deserved. Its well run and is full of great features.

donothoponpop

Well done IMRA, especially all involved in the website. Great site, great organization, great bunch of people. Onwards and upwards.

shels4ever

Well done, Its come a long way, I ran a few races as a junior back in the mid 90's and even then it was a great . Some really good people involved.

T runner

Early evening, click on your profile (or search for anyones with search field). in "Runners".
Under "Runners details" Tab it graphs races per year. Under "Races" Tab it graphs % of Winners time for the races over each years results.
If you click the "Me" Tab it will put up a permanent "me" Tab on the home page which will bring you straight to your own Profile.
This feature is ther about 6 months. Too much Racing and not enough Browsing EarlyEvening! (Nothing wrong with that ofcourse).

Under "runners" anyone can search for a runner. If anyone is thinking of trying hillrunning, they could search for a runner they know of their own standard to see how he/she does in races.

Slogger Jogger

earlyevening wrote: »

Having done 40 or so hill runs over the last few years I've never seen the "graphs indicating progress". I do love seeing the photos appear a few days after the run. Some of the photos look amazing - enough to get you all hill running in 2009??
Congrats on the website award. Its well deserved. Its well run and is full of great features.

The graphs of results were a new feature only recently added, so if you look at your own runner profile you should see that? The running profile and the ability to tag other runners you might be pals with / competitive with is another great feature

earlyevening

I use the site all the time and know all the features - and I think they're great. Its just think the initial description of graphs indicating progress uphill or downhill was overplaying it a little I thought.
I see tables of results and a few graphs indicating how many races per season I've done.
I think the strengths of the site are the excellent photo archive and the active forum. I like the new design too - esp the "me" thing and the way in which you can flag your buddies.
Roll on January and a bit more of it. No Ballinastoe this year in the Winter League unfortunately. Thats a great run!

Krusty_Clown

It is a excellent website. Congrats on the award.

Stark

Was great news. Totally deserved.

T runner

I use the site all the time and know all the features - and I think they're great. Its just think the initial description of graphs indicating progress uphill or downhill was overplaying it a little I thought.
I see tables of results and a few graphs indicating how many races per season I've done.

Just to clarify, If you look under the "Races" tab for any runner you will indeed see a graph of their progress (provided they have done more than 1 race). % of winning time per race for each year a runner has competed is graphed. an downhill curve would indicate positive progress against the winning times of the races etc. % of winning time was chosen as a truer reflection of performance than race placing as there are divergences in numbers racing. E.g A lot more in summer League than in the championship races on one of the big mountains.
There are some exceptions e.g a 108% finish in a World Championship Trial Race would be a better result than a 108% result in Howth winter, but the runner will be aware of these.

graphs indicating progress whether uphill or downhill!

This was just a pun, uphill and downhill jmeaning bad progress or good progress!

Sorry to appear pedantic but I think this feature on the site is a nice little gem and is an example of the empathy the designers (runners almost all) habe shown to their site users and it is only fair to them that its described accurately.

Exciting time with the new calendar up and plans and possibilities being considered. Ballinastoe isnt on again for the second year running but its infamous more evil summer twin is.

Good news for Connaught people is that there will be a few new races in the province this year including a probable run on the trails and paths up and around Cairns Hill above Sligo town in July. Nice tester for Warriors run. These races will appear in Calendar soon.

Next up and the last mountain race for 2008 is the Charles Barrington Memorial race on the Sugarloaf on Dec 27th. The race is held to commemorate Wicklow man Barrington who, in addition to being the first man to climb the fearsome Eiger, and owning and training the winning horse in the first Irish Grand National, also organised the first ever mountain race in Ireland on the Sugarloaf.
The race will be started by Barrington's great great grand nephew Ron Barrington and his antique gun and there will be Gold medals for winners in Male and Female.