Monthly Update - May 2023

I get pretty cheesed off when I phone big companies. They say stuff like "we've had an unprecedented number of calls", usually in a northern voice to make it sound wholesome and trustworthy. What they mean is "we haven't hired enough staff to answer your query, so here's some tinny repetitive music, scientifically proven to make you scream and hang up. But your call is important to us."

When I say "Fetcheveryone changes every day to meet your needs" I truly mean it. But convincing you of that in a world of crummy customer service is a challenge. I thought I'd tackle that head on, and explain what I mean.

And guess what? It doesn't come from a dreadful “do not reply” email. It comes from me. You can hit reply, and say what you like. I'll read it, and I'll reply. Unless you are clearly a weirdo.

Convince Me You Mean It

Sure. In April 2019 I introduced a Feature Request system. Anyone can submit a request, and you can vote for the ones you like the sound of. There have been over 1600 requests. Sometimes they're for little things, like a new training category or font size, and sometimes they're for bigger stuff.

Of those 1629 requests, 1074 of them are now closed. OK, so some I have to politely refuse, and sometimes people put in duplicate requests... but I think that's a pretty good strike rate.

To give you a flavour of this, I've gathered together a bunch of requests that I've resolved in the last thirty days. I hope they prove my point, and maybe introduce you to a few things you might not know about. Let's roll.

Who Squares Wins

This is a GPS-based game where you play against an opponent from anywhere in the world. The goal is to take control of the squares in your grid by running, cycling, walking or swimming through them more than your opponent. It's great for encouraging you to vary your routes to explore as much as possible of your local area. There's also a multiplayer version of the game, where 128 players compete against each other to avoid knockout.

During the last month, I've added a set of badges that you can earn by winning 5, 10 or 25 games in a row. I've also added a note to the game home page so you can see when the next multiplayer tournament begins (spoiler alert, it's 29th May!). And I've amended the multiplayer screen to give you easier access to the map to plan your routes.

Virtual Challenge

Our annual challenge runs from March to October each year, and is a fun way to stay incentivised to keep your mileage ticking over. This year our run/walk route takes in a variety of UK neolithic sites including Stonehenge and Glastonbury Tor; our cyclists are travelling from the Statue of Liberty to Miami Beach; and our swimmers are floating 40 miles down the Seine to finish at the Eiffel Tower.

A simple update – I've added a note to the challenge header so you can see exactly how far behind or ahead you are.

Route of the Day

Every day, the site features a new picture taken by a member of the Fetch community on one of their adventures. It's nice to see where other people run, and some of the photos are stunning!

Updates here are a checkbox you can tick to get a daily reminder to look at the picture; and a link back to the forum thread where you can leave your comments about today's pic.

Weight Tracker

Obviously (but I'll say it anyway) our weight tracker lets you add daily readings for weight, body fat, muscle, and water content. And then it gives you a pretty graph so you can monitor your lardicity over time.

This month I've amended the scale on the graph to make it more useful, and added BMI lines as guidance so you can see where you're at. And I've improved the date range selection, so you can look back with nostalgia at times gone by when you were lighter/heavier (delete as appropriate) than you are now.

Hill Analysis

Our hills tool plucks all the biggest climbs out of your training log from the last 365 days. We moved house in November, to an area with more hills (or to be more accurate, fewer options to avoid them). It's been fun watching my hill list grow. There are also badges available for collecting a hundred 10 metre climbs within 365 days. And if you've nailed that, you can try for the 25m, 50m and 100m variants.

Recent updates mean that you can now sort the table by date. This is handy as you can see which of your climbs are about to expire from your list. I've also added a graph at the top of the table, so you can see how your hill climbing is going.

Forum

Our forum is a diverse collection of discussions on every subject, with hundreds of active threads. There's even a bit of talk about running, cycling and swimming in there.

Each thread has a side box linking to other similar threads. It's hard to run a forum for nearly 20 years without some things coming up more than once! I've amended the related threads so you can see when they were last active.

Race Listings

Our race listings are a testament to what happens when a group of people work together. Every single event in our listings has been added by Fetchies. By adding your local races, you can help fill in the gaps in our database – and that little bit of altruism, multiplied by thousands of Fetchies, means that our race listings are pretty awesome. Your efforts help the race organisers too – the listings generate thousands of clicks to help them fill their starting lines. And it's all for free.

Just a little update here... I was asked for a way to search all the off-road types in one go. So in the search filters, there's now a new category of race called 'Off-road' which includes all trail, cross-country and fell events.

Pace Band Generator

If you race, then you probably know that your racing brain sometimes needs a bit of help with maths as your body gets tired. Our Pace Band Generator lets you input a race distance and goal time, and generates a simple table of mile or kilometre splits in a printable bracelet format. There's also room for an emergency number – you can never have too many of those.

This month's update allows you to amend the bracelet to include a negative split. You can choose how aggressive to be from 'slight', through 'punchy', 'angry' and 'drunk'.

Training Log

Our training log has been round for nearly 20 years, and in itself has more features than many websites. And unlike many of the others, it's completely free to access all of it.

As of this month, you can now give a thumbs up on another person's training. That sounds a bit old school these days, but I finally gave in to the overwhelming support that this feature request received. And you know what? It IS quite nice when you get upthumbed. Why not start with today's training feed, and spread some love.

Routes (and other Maps)

Fetcheveryone lets you plot routes to work out what you're getting yourself into before you head out. You can check elevation to find out where the hills are; and you can save routes then amend them with detours later. You can also send routes your devices to help you navigate.

But now, when you're in the middle of nowhere, the new 'Find Me' button can help you. Open up your route, hit 'Find Me' and it'll pinpoint you on the map – so you can tell whether you've gone off track. A few of our other games, like Who Squares Wins and Conquercise now feature this button – so you can check whether you're in the right place and so forth.

Best Week Analysis

This is one of many views of your training log that can be fun and useful to look at. After all, there's only so much time you can spend ACTUALLY running, right? It's a simple table that ranks your weeks in terms of overall distance.

A feature request asked for the ability to change the starting day for weeks. Some folks like Mondays, others like Sundays – and I bet there are reasons for using any of the other five days too. And hey, it worked for me! I'd previously thought that my best ever week was 40.17 miles. But if the week starts on a Saturday, it's a whopping 46.75 – all hail the new way of doing things!

Conquercise

This is one of our simplest and oldest games, dating back to 2011. The entire world is chopped into squares, and it's your job to visit as many as you can. But then there's another layer – if you visit a square more than anyone else, you own it – and you can rename it to annoy the other visitors.

It's the sort of game that lends itself to lots of leaderboards – and these have been beefed up so that you can get a better understanding of what you need to do to progress.

Bored yet?

There were a few more, but I'll stop there and check in on you. I hope you found the updates useful and interesting. If you did, you could reply to this to let me know, and I could do something like this again in another month. Or if it sucked, that'd be good feedback too. Maybe you'd prefer something shorter, or with more pretty pictures. Either way, it'd be good to know I'm not yelling into the void. Like when I'm on hold to a call centre.

Check out our 20th anniversary kit!

Our 20th anniversary kit is now available to buy in the Fetch shop. It looks awesome and it's a great way to support and represent the site. Click the banner to browse the merch!

A banner for the Fetch shop, featuring Fetch and KatieB decked out in the new kit

About Fetcheveryone
Fetcheveryone is a small independent company. There's no big corporation behind it, just me, with a dog on my feet in a home office at the bottom of the garden. Despite that, the site generates nearly 25 million page views per year and plays host to over 300,000 visitors every year. We also offer extensive training logging and analysis; and a thriving supportive community of lovely people. Unlike some sites, we have no paywall. As someone who loves running, my goal is to add value, not extract it. Three quarters of our funding comes from voluntary donations from happy users.