Happy New Year!

Happy new year to all runners! I am looking forward to what 2024 brings us. This year is a leap year so that gives us one additional day to run and I'm excited to set new milestones for both running and development. Let there be many great experiences, personal records and – for me – sustained development elevating Futunk from development to launch.

2023 Recap

At the beginning of the year, Futunk barely even existed and didn't even have a brand logo! Under the hood the site was nothing but a direct copy of the running section on my personal website.

Transforming a small personal site into a multi-user platform posed many technical challenges. I will spare you the boring and nerdy details, but despite not launching in 2023 I'm very satisfied with the amount of progress. made. Here's a concise preview of improvements and additions:

• This blog, first and foremost! In 2023, I lacked the proper means to communicate and consequently barely posted any updates. The last Futunk update on social media was last summer and frankly most months I've spend far more time running trails and road races than completing this site. That's about to change!

• User registrations, both by e-mail and Google single sign-on. You will be able to build a profile just like mine, follow other users and interact through comments and likes (props).

  All profiles feature a dedicated Personal Records page, including an overview of best performances for each year. A dedicated Statistics page features a Last 7/30 days chart as well as detailed breakdowns per year, shoe, activity type and city/country.

• Activity pages have been expanded with notes, an image gallery and weather data. When participating in events, your results from other editions will also be shown.

• Heatmaps are now included on all Profiles, showing every single track, road and path ran in a beautiful map.

What will happen in 2024...

Futunk will finally launch! It's still too early to give a precise date, but my efforts have shifted from building the foundation towards attention to detail. All crucial features are prepared, what remains is a lot of testing and final tweaks to make sure Futunk offers a secure and resilient experience.

On a personal note, I'm looking forward to participate in many events and races again. I have already signed up for half a dozen of marathons and have a few exciting city trips planned. Obviously I will bring my running shoes! Developing Futunk has conflicted a bit with training, but if I pick up the pace maybe I can get closer to breaking that sub-four time on the marathon. If not, at least I'll make sure to have fun trying.

Enjoy your year of running!