The second one was easier than the first

The blog has passed another little milestone today.

In the last 24 hours the blog received it 200,000th view. Noice.

This second 100,000 views has gone by pretty quickly. It took me until January this year to reach 100,000 (nearly 4 years), whereas this second 100,000 has gone by in a touch over 7 months.

In the murky world of online audience tracking it is always a bit hard to know just how many of the views are genuine. There is a little engine in the back end of the blog that tracks the views. Don't worry it isn't in a creepy stalky way, I don't know where everyone lives or anything, but rather in how many people have clicked on the blog, what country they are in and what platform they are using (ie Windows, Apple etc). That sort of general information. However, the audience tracking side of things can get a bit confused by things like bots etc, so it isn't always accurate. There are more accurate ways to track views, but if I am honest I don't really understand them. I am pretty content to simply use the tracker that is built into the blog and leave it at that.

So based on that, happy 200,000th view to me!!!

Going back to that data, it is always very interesting to review. Take the most popular posts for instance. My most popular post has been the one where I was wondering whether to get an ablation or not, closely followed by the one in which I retired from being a pro athlete. Co-incidentally these are two of the posts that I linked on social media, which perhaps speaks to the power of social media. But I think it also shows that in general the audience of this blog likes to feel involved. I also like to think that those two posts being the most popular indicates that the audience of this blog are a pretty compassionate lot. That is my theory anyway.

It is actually very heartening to reach the milestone of 200,000 views. After I started having health issues and I had to step back from racing, I wasn't really sure where the blog was going to go, or whether it was even going to go on. The blog really sort of floated in limbo for a couple of months as I tried to figure out where to take it.

I now feel like I am starting to find my blogging feet again and the blog is starting to get back into a bit of a rhythm, but it was touch and go there for a while. With the blog shifting from an athlete's perspective to a coaches one, it is reassuring that people are still clicking and reading. It gives me confidence that the blog still has a place and relevance on the interweb.

This last 100,000 views has been a fairly tumultuous one, but it has been a lot of fun too. I am looking forward to the next 100,000.

As always, thanks for reading.