If you want to keep your personal best times, goals, or accomplishments private … no problem. If you don’t want your profile to appear in Partner Finder or even general search results … no problem. If you just want to lurk around the site basically invisible, well, you can do that too.

Not only can you control how people see you, you can also control how people can contact you. You’ll probably notice that now someone has to at least be a Thoos member to contact you. By default, any Thoos member can contact you, but you can even change that. Note: while members may be able to contact you, at NO time is your email address made public or share with anyone.

To edit your privacy settings, simply click “Update My Privacy Settings” from your member “Dashboard.”

In honor of National GIS Day today (November 14, 2007), we’d like to talk a little bit about a new feature that we rolled out a few weeks ago when we added United States Geographical Survey (USGS) topographic map viewing capabilities to Thoos. You can now create running, cycling, hiking maps of your favorite trails and off-road destinations with ease.

Creating online maps of your favorite routes is nothing new on the web. We have offered the ability to create and save online maps using Google Maps technology for the past year. However, it has always been a pain-in-the-butt to trace routes that went off-road. Using the Google Maps satellite layer you could use an aerial photograph to help you draw your route, but it was not always very helpful or accurate. Now you can select the “Topo” layer on Thoos maps to help you draw accurate off-road routes.

When you zoom all the way in, you will see a series of seamlessly stitched 7.5-minute, 1:24,000-scale quadrangle maps. A scale of 1:25,000 is used for maps based on metric units (1 centimeter = 0.25 kilometer). So, you can get easy access to view thousands of established trails, fire roads, jeep roads, and topographic features that USGS maps provide.

Take it for a spin and create a custom map for your next adventure!

After you create a new map, select the code in the right column under “Share This Map.” You can also customize the size of the map for different presentations by clicking the link “Customize This Map.”

Give it a whirl. Create a new map.

We have just added the ability to explore over 55,000 seamlessly stitched USGS Topographic Maps for your next adventure. Go to http://thoos.com/topo/ to check it out. View the entire United States, or enter a specific location and seamlessly pan and zoom to your desired location.

You can also flip between different views between any map on the site now. Whether you are drawing a new route or viewing a guide, you can view “map”, “satellite”, “hybrid”, and now “topo” layers.

About USGS Maps

The United States Geological Survey (USGS) took over responsibility for mapping the country in 1879 and has been the primary civilian mapping agency of the United States ever since. Now you can view this complete seamless series of maps on Thoos.

The best known USGS maps are those of the 7.5-minute, 1:24,000-scale quadrangle series. A scale of 1:25,000 is used for maps based on metric units (1 centimeter = 0.25 kilometer). The area portrayed on each sheet ranges from 64 square miles at latitude 30 degrees north to 49 square miles at latitude 49 degrees north. (Zoom in all the way to view 7.5 minute maps)

A scale of 1:24,000 allows considerable detail to be shown in the quadrangle areas. It takes about 57,000 maps to cover the conterminous 48 States, Hawaii, and territories.

For a while now, we have offered the ability for you to keep track and share your athletic goals and accomplishments. However, until now, they just appeared in your user profile in the order they were added. It worked, but it was less than a perfect solution.

Now, you can organize and reorder your athletic goals and accomplishments till the cows come home. Has “I want to run a marathon” become your number one goal for this year? All you need to do is click “Reorder Goals” link at the top of your “Goals” tab, and then just drag-and-drop your goals to reflect your new priorities. Same goes for your accomplishments. Just drag-and-drop your accomplishments to reflect you best athletic achievements of all time.

What kind of social site would we be if we didn’t offer a way to keep up with your friends? Well, now you can do just that on Thoos. Under the ‘Friends’ tab in your user profile, you will now see (in the right column) all the recent goals, accomplishment, and fast times of anyone that you mark as a “friend.” If nothing else it can help you find more common interests and even spark a little friendly competition among your peers.

Honestly, we are just letting this thing evolve in whatever direction the community takes it. Recently people have been posting a lot of goals and maps, but we still have a passion for creating a huge resource for outdoor athletes including free online guides, meeting place, personal log book, etc. Either way, whatever direction we take, we promise to stay true to our core members and strive to provide a great resource for outdoor athletes.

Here are a few things that we have pondered for the near future:

• Integrating more mapping functionality into our online guides
• Tools for uploading data from GPS devices into custom maps to share with friends
• Adding free elevation profiles to our mapping tools
• Increasing the number of our free online guides for people to share - right now we offer over 5,500 guides
• Add blog feeds to your user profile
• More tools to meet other outdoor athletes
• More privacy features to stay completely anonymous if you desire
• More real-time stream flow data

Then for the more distant future:

• Uploading or linking video content to online guides
• Free stream flow data feeds for your favorite streams
• Desktop widgets
• Open API for developers to use our data

Some, all, or none of these features might become a reality soon here on Thoos. Log in, stay tuned, and enjoy the ride. If you have any suggestion on what you’d like to see on Thoos, leave us a comment or drop us an email.

New Features

• Member’s goals integrated throughout site
• Member’s personal best times integrated throughout site
• Sortable goals; rank your most important goals and achievements on you profile pages
• Ability to keep ‘Personal Best Times’ private
• Show recent related goals and recent related personal best times in right column of search results
• Added ‘Map View’ to search results so you can get search results in list format or plotted on a map
• See what your friends are up to - Friends tab shows recent goals, accomplishments, and times of your Friends
• Create a map and embed it in your website - very fun stuff!
• Finally added a contact form to the blog

Changes

• New layout - inspired by Digg
• Combined ‘Events’ and ‘Places’ into a new category called ‘Guides’
• New ‘Maps’ page layout with most recently created member-maps
• Use of AJAX to add interactivity throughout the site without the need of page reload
• “See Also” links added to right column of detail pages
• Amazon book links removed - sorry about that mess
• Improved functionality and fixed several bug that kept our Mac friends from using Safari on the site - shame on me
• Fixed nagging Internet Explorer 6 issues - grrrrrrrrrr
• Fixed and improved the JavaScript and RSS feeds for search results
• Show dates of events in search results
• Improved the ‘Add a Guide’ and ‘Edit Guide’ pages for better user experience
• Drap and drop markers when editing maps
• Updated look and feel of weather pages and local forecast search

More to come soon …

It was a big year for social networking, and it seemed like .coms were being snatched up for billions every day. Might have been us (but probably not) if we decided to go the route of venture funding and quitting our day jobs … but it wasn’t. We decided to keep the day jobs, have a few adventures, and even have a few kids along the way. We haven’t spent a dime on advertising and have basically been growing under the radar for the past year. Good or bad? Well, we are having fun and it plan on sticking around for a while.

In the process of “flying under the radar”, we seen traffic improve significantly every month since launch (October 2006) and are now (August 2007) just under 6,500 registered and contributing members. Those 6,500 members have contributed over 5,500 guides, shared 2,301 goals, posted 1,752 photos, created 1115 maps, and posted 923 personal best times. Not too bad, if you ask me.

So, we just wanted to say, “Thanks for your support!” We look forward to another year, and continuing to be a great resource for outdoor athletes.

Thanks,

Sean and Anne Hudson

Once the race starts, run (or walk) no more than two abreast. Move to the side (the right side unless otherwise indicated) if someone behind says they are coming through. “On your left” means someone is passing you on your left, so you should move to your right to accommodate them. “On your right” would mean you should move left. If you wear headphones during a race, which is not advised, work hard to be even more aware of your surroundings and especially the racers around you.

If you slow down or stop to drink at a water stop, step off to the side of the course to allow other participants easy access to the water while maintaining their speed.

At the finish, clear the chute as soon as possible. Enjoy the refreshments provided, but be kind to those running behind you or who just haven’t made it to the food tables yet. So, take some food for yourself but please don’t take extra for non-runners (family, friends, etc).

Of course, feel free to cheer on other runners. Also, any words of thanks and acknowledgment to the volunteers are welcome and appreciated. The race wouldn’t be the same without them! Basically, just go race with a good attitude, a lot of spirit and some common sense. Enjoy yourself and let others do the same!

Editor’s Note: If you have any other tips on etiquette or personal stories you would like to share, use the comment form below.

This article originally appeared on RunningPlaces.com and was written by a Thoos contributing member Jesslyn Cummings.