Dan Holmes.com

Why is it unseasonably warm every time I run a marathon? One thing is for sure, when I’m scheduled to run 26.2, you can count on a clear, sunny day. It was in the low 70s and sunny last Saturday when I crossed the finish line for my second marathon, this one the Bayshore in Traverse City.

The conditions were perfect, the course was very flat, and I ran strong. My official time was 3:47:16 - nearly 12 minutes faster than my first marathon, which I ran in Nashville in April of 2007. For the record, I finished 411th out of 1,263 runners. I was 72nd out of 145 men aged 40-49.

I was feeling very good through the 18-mile mark, and then I started to tighten up. I gutted out the last 8 miles or so, really slowing my pace. Should I run another marathon, my goal is to run a more even “split” - meaning that my first half (which I ran in 1:48 this time) and second half (which I ran in 1:58) are nearly identical or at least much closer.

Those of you who pledged my run, thank you! I raised nearly $2,000 for Dakoske/Phoenix Treatment Center. The money will go to help pay the cost of drug and alcohol treatment for their patients. Also, for the rest of you, there’s still time to pledge.

If you pledged, you’ll receive a pledge packet in the next few days with details of where to send your check and how your money helps.

I appreciate everyone’s generosity so much. It’s a great cause. I was overwhelmed by the outpuring of donations and also good wishes for my run. I really felt like I was running for a purpose, which helps when you’re logging 26-plus miles. By the way, a funny thing happened on Saturday morning - I missed my ride to the race! My neighbor knocked on my door, but I had biked down to the store to pick up a few carb boosters for the race. When I got back, she was gone, and I didn’t have a ride across town. So, I rode my bike the 3 miles to the start and was there in time for the gun. Phew!

I loved the race and I’m sure I’ll do another marathon in the future. For now, I’m looking forward to some short runs with the Traverse City Track Club, and a marathon relay in August in Crystal Lake. If there’s anyone who wants to run the relay as part of my team, email me. You’ll only have to do a five-miler.

Until next time, keep on running.

It’s never been easier to travel, as airlines, hotels, resorts, and travel-related retailers are clamoring to attract us to use their services. The website TravBuddy.com is a great place to get travel info and much more.

The best thing about TravBuddy.com: Social networking. The site allows users to find travel buddies planning to travel to the same places at the same times, or to learn about destinations from people who have been there or actually live there. In fact, some users find friends on TravBuddy who they can travel with or get help from when they take their trip.

Another wonderful part of the site are the reams of travel reviews. There are, as of last count, more than 17,000 reviews of restaurants, bars, hotels and attractions. Need to know where the best martini is in Madrid? You can find out. Want to find the best place to rent a kayak in Sydney? That’s there too.

Users can also create travel-based blogs and upload travel photos. The photos (750,000 have been posted to blogs so far) are a great way to actually see places you want to go to, but the blogs are a little thin. Though TravBuddy boasts 65,000+ blogs, most of them are old our rarely updated, and many of them offer little to help you plan a trip. The reviews are best for getting the nitty-gritty details.

As of March 2008, TravBuddy has nearly 1,350,000 registered contributors and it’s growing, as it has been featured prominently on the NBC Nightly News, Popular Science, Real Simple Travel, and other media outlets.

I signed up on TravBuddy a few months ago because I’m going to the South Pacific in 2009. In a very short time (within hours) I had connected with folks who had been where I plan to travel and they gave me valuable tips. I also met several very friendly TravBuddy users who gave me advice on booking flights. The community at TravBuddy is wonderful.

The worst thing about TravBuddy.com: the blogs are not updated frequently (user-driven so that’s to be expected somewhat). For that reason, the site just misses a 5-star rating.

The least you need to know: TravBuddy.com is a social networking site to connect travelers with similar interests and itineraries. It’s especially appealing to adventure travelers, the types who cringe at the thought of a bus tour or a guided walk through a museum. However, it still offers a community that will benefit all types of travelers. It’s a fantastic way to safely connect with people in the places you want to travel to, to learn the secrets of enjoying that destination. You may also make a travel buddy who will throw on a backpack and take the trip with you!

Website rating: 4 out of 5 stars

URL: www.travbuddy.com

Earlier this year I wanted to challenge myself to build a website completely with CSS and PHP. I did a a makeover of my workhorse site The Baseball Page, which has been online since 1995, chugging along with a faithful following and generating excellent page views and income via Google Adsense. All the content has been and always will be free, and with a loyal group of writers and contributors, the site is fresh.

The site has much more color and it relies more on graphics than ever before. As I always have, I relied heavily on PHP includes to make the site flexible for updating the look-and-feel.

In addition, this is the first of my sites that I’ve run on Expression Engine, the CMS from Ellis Labs. Outside of the dynamic database content that generates the player pages and the lists of rankings, etc., the content is stored inside EE.

New features include a daily baseball video provided by YouTube, and an email newsletter that delivers This Day in Baseball History info to your email box every day.