An Interview with the Interviewer:
Jason Byrne
By Ralph Epifanio
While contemplating possible victims subjects for my “runnerviews,” it usually takes me some time to convince my mark…err, person of interest (that’s better) to warm up to the idea. Jason, however, took a little longer than my usual targets. When he finally caved—I mean, was convinced—and shared his story, it proved to be a hum-dinger. I’m sure that you’ll agree with me that his is a remarkable history, one worth of all the attention that it will, no doubt, receive.
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In the storm-tossed mind of highly creative individuals, there is no rest, no port that might be called safe harbor. Waves of ideas flood the mind-flowing with inspiration and ebbing with exhaustion. Goals can be short-lived, because new ones quickly take their place. Days are long, and nights short. Even while asleep, the subconscious of these paragons of humanity become a fertile ground of design and innovation.
History—and industry—are replete with individuals that have charged onto the scene and, literally, created something substantial where a void previously existed. Flrunners.com, and its “big brother,” MileSplit, are textbook examples of this. A little over a decade ago, there was a “black hole” in running: no timely and readily accessible reporting of important running-related events existed. Enter Jason Byrne and his brain-child, which became one of the most popular websites in America.
An email to Jason Byrne is a clue to its importance to the running community. While we await a reply, we wonder, what can he be doing? (Why, answering one of the other 100 or so that he receives over the course of an average day!) His replies are short and to the point, perhaps an indication of a “triage” of skimming. (Necessitated by the sheer volume of contacts—nationwide—seeking his adroit advice.) And the time of their posting is frequently well past the hours when most of us could remain alert. (It’s the only time he can, physically, keep up with a tsunami of contacts.)
Recently, I accomplished the impossible; maintaining JB’s undivided attention, without interruption, for an unimaginable hour and a half…I exited his office with six photos and twelve pages of hastily written, single-spaced notes. (I wonder whose birthday party I imposed upon?)
What follows is the answer to that most open-ended of questions, “Jason, what’s on your mind?”
Ralph: “Jason, tell me your life story. Only kidding. Let’s start with the website. When did you get the idea?”
Jason: “The precursor for FLR (abbreviation for flrunners.com) was a website for my high school cross country team at Sebring. At that time we had a good team and were state-ranked. I was an average runner on a great, cohesive team. We had five runners in a class above me: Erik McGuire, Doug Griffis, Chuckie Manning, Robbie Sampson (who was also a college teammate), and Mike Silva.
“In 1997, while on the JV team, I really looked up to these guys and my coach Jeff Shoemaker. At that time there was another web site called ‘CoachNet.net’ run by Lyman coach Fred Finke, who is now a business partner in MileSplit. He had FACA rankings and posted some results. It was what it was, but I wanted something that related more directly to my high school. So the site was blue and white: a blue background with white text. That’s why FLR uses those as our primary colors to this day.
“I started posting our school’s results, and then complete results of whatever races we went to. Next, I started posting scouting reports for our competition in what was then the 4A (now 2A). It kind of grew from there and changed. It went from being called ‘The Sebring High School Cross Country and Distance Track Homepage’ to ‘The Florida 4A Runners’ Zone’ to ‘Florida Runner’s Zone’ and eventually of course to just ‘Florida Runners’.
“I think at first it was hosted on Tripod.com (which was a free web hosting service in the early days of the internet). That was the first host. Then I moved it over to my local ISP (Strato Net in Sebring). I think the URL was www.strato.net/~forrest/xc (after Forrest Gump). During my senior year, I started a web development company with another teenager called Highlands Online, and we moved the site to that server.
“So it went through several name changes, but also changes in the scope of the coverage. First it just covered our team, then our classification, then just Florida distance running, and finally, the entire state, with track and field, and everything running.
“When Sebring High School graduated its top five runners in 1998, everyone said, ‘They’re done.’ We took that as a personal challenge and made it our mission to make it back to the state meet. That goal served to bond us and cemented my love for the sport--cross country as a team sport. Although we didn’t finish especially high at state (I think we were 14th), we proved them wrong and made it! And it was during that time that the site really took off.”
Ralph: “When did you realize that your ‘hobby’ was causing ripples within the running community?”
Jason: “We were at the state meet and all standing around our team camp. Now, I normally ran between fifth and seventh man and occasionally higher (laughs). Some guys from Tampa Jesuit came running up (seeing our Sebring Blue Streaks banner), asking ‘Where’s Jason?’ Coach Shoemaker looked confused and said, ‘Jason? You must mean Bubba (Chavis). He’s our #1 guy.’ But they really did mean me.
“These guys and Coach Mike Boza, who won the 4A championship that day, made me realize that the site was something special. It was legit. It mattered to people and made a difference. That was the fall of 1998.”
Jason was still covering cross country and track in his senior year, but he graduated in May of 1999 and went on to study journalism at Florida Southern College.
Ralph: “At the point where you graduated from high school and became a college student—with a much more intensive curriculum—did the situation cause you to consider whether to continue or not?”
Jason: “Now I was going to college and there were all these questions, like ‘What are you going to do, Jason?’ And people kept encouraging me: ‘You’ve got to keep this up!’ Unfortunately, as a college student, I was poor, and had no money to pay for servers.
“Then two guys from Miami really stepped up for me. Ary Montalvo, the legendary head coach at Our Lady of Lourdes, gave me $100 to register a domain (that’s when it became flrunners.com), and Jorge Bustamante, the #2 runner at Belen Jesuit—who worked at a web hosting company--gave me space to put it on. Now FLR was live.
“The name of the site had changed so many times that it had become confusing, but now it was a name that everyone could remember. Those guys really helped me put it all together.”
Ralph: “Was your ‘hobby’ at all cohesive with your journalism major?”
Jason: “Somewhat. Occasionally a professor would give me an assignment—like design a newspaper layout—and I’d do it like an FLR newsletter, or maybe an article here and there could pull double-duty as an assignment.”
Ralph: “And yet flrunners.com was light years beyond what was happening in the classroom.”
Jason: “Yeah. Everything was still kind of old school back then, both in video production and with print. Things really hadn’t caught up to the digital age in education (and still haven’t in many cases). So there was nothing but raw experience to prepare me. Although my time there was valuable, my ‘real schooling’ was going out and doing it; learning out of ambition, necessity, and through trial and error.
Ralph: “That’s kind of ambitious for a college freshman.”
Jason: “I was always an entrepreneur. As a junior in high school, I was on a county commission sub-committee. I had a high school speech class and we went on a field trip to a candidate debate. When they opened it up to the audience, I went up there and started asking questions and challenged the county commission candidates. They were kind of surprised, and I guess impressed. The lady who won the election ended up appointing me to a sub-committee on a controversial issue facing the county at that time. I was the youngest-ever county official and worked alongside forty and fifty-year-olds.
“Also around that time, I had a web design business called Highlands Online and we were members of the Sebring Chamber of Commerce and attended those meetings. I was kind of a weird kid in that regard, I guess (laughs).
“I always knew that I was going to do something big and run my own business. So when I decided to keep doing the site as a full-time college student, I felt that if I was going to do it, I had to do it to the fullest extent and turn it into a business. Either I was going to give it up, or do it right. There’s no half way; either you’re in it, or not.”
Ralph: “Knowing how much time you devote to the website, I couldn’t imagine doing so as a full-time college student.”
Jason: “I did spend a lot of time on the computer, but I had a social life too. I think college students cry too much about not having enough time. While in college you have more time to do things than you ever will.”
Ralph: “What kind of ‘other things’ did you find time to do in college?”
Jason: “In my freshman year I was balancing my studies, running cross country, being a member of a fraternity, and doing the website. Although I gave up being a part of the team after freshman year, I stayed very close friends with them and helped Coach Dawson out. From then on, however, I focused on those other three things.”
Ralph: “What fraternity were you in? What was the fraternity experience like?”
Jason: “Lambda Chi Alpha. It was very character-building. I know what people say about partying, but fraternities also do a lot of philanthropic work, and I learned a lot from the weekly business meetings, especially about putting on events and just dealing with people.”
Ralph: “Meanwhile, flrunners.com grew.”
Jason: “There were some important things that happened in college. First, I knew that I was not going to ‘half step’ the idea. I was all in. And I decided early on not to focus on what was already out there. One of my core business beliefs is that if you focus on the competition, you are destined to follow in their footsteps. There were a few other sites out there in the running space, but I turned the other way.
“I looked at ESPN in their coverage of the NBA or NFL and saw team and athlete pages with rosters, stats, schedules, articles, etc. I thought ‘that’s what we need for track!’ But I didn’t know how to do any of this. I wasn’t really a programmer; I knew HTML and that was about it. So I started to teach myself how to program. I studied up on servers, PHP, relational databases, and how to make it scale (as the amount of information and traffic grow).”
Ralph: “What exactly does that mean?”
Jason: “Basically, all developers know how to write a web site, but only a small subset really knows how to make it scale. Scaling is being able to support a large amount of data and traffic. The vast majority of web developers never need to deal with it. To get 100 visits is one thing, but what if you get 100,000, and then 1,000,000? What about when your database goes from 100,000 rows, to three million, to 15,000,000?
“Between 1999 and 2000, I started taking it seriously and began programming and creating the database. These days, I am more of a developer and entrepreneur than a journalist. Actually, for the past couple of years or so (as we’ve grown more corporate), I’m more often wearing the manager hat than anything else, unfortunately. That’s not as fun!”
Ralph: “How did the MileSplit network get organized?”
Jason: “I started that as well. The idea behind it was that FLR was doing well, and I knew some guys in other states who were doing the same kind of thing. So I started thinking, ‘are all of these guys going to have to teach themselves to program also?’ We will all have to re-invent the wheel over and over… or else just have mediocre sites without the benefit of all this wiz-bang database-driven stuff that I was developing. So I started writing my software—which powered FLR--in a way that could support other state sites.
“Looking at it from a marketing standpoint, I thought that no matter how big my site in Florida grows, I will have trouble being big enough to matter to major brands. But if we all work together, we will matter, and are greater than the sum of our parts.
“So I decided to reach out and ask these other webmasters if they wanted to come on board. I laid out this vision and convinced them to join the network, one-by-one. On January 4, 2001, we flipped the switch, and MileSplit came online. Slowly, after that, more states came on, and we’re still adding states. We currently have 34 states with active webmasters…plus our national site, our college site, Canada, and the Bahamas.”
Ralph: “Does it ever get to the point where you will be able to do less, rather than more?”
Jason: “If you mean as far as the overall work load, I’m not sure. I hope so. But as we have grown, brought on employees, webmasters, etc., even if I get relief in one area, there are always six others that need my attention. So it’s more like shifting things around to other areas. But in certain ways, there’s somewhat less pressure now, and we’re much better off than a few years ago. Hopefully, we can continue to grow and add to our staff, both locally and nationally.”
“As far as getting results and coverage in Florida... It’s cool. It’s gotten to the point where guys that I grew up with have become coaches--and even people who came afterwards, runners who ‘grew up’ with the website, are coaching—and are helping out.
“I think, for the most part, runners and coaches are very supportive, especially this new generation who grew up with it, or at least grew up with the Internet. And that makes it easier. However, there will probably always be a certain minority who are resentful or resistant.”
Ralph: “And in covering events, from one end of the state to the other, I have met both. While I published a regional running magazine from (roughly) 1981 to 2003, I had the same experience, and could not fathom a reason for a negative response to such a positive idea.
“But my involvement was simple compared to yours. How do you define yourself at this point, and how do you prioritize your finite amount of time?”
Jason: “I am always wearing (at least) two hats. First, I am the webmaster of flrunners.com in Florida. But I am also the CEO of a national organization, MileSplit. So I’m always serving two related, but distinct, masters and need to balance the needs of both.
“We’re still a very small company with just a few full-time employees; MileSplit has five full-time employees and a host of contractors. I mean, I’m a journalist, a programmer, DBA (database administrator), CEO (chief executive officer), and manager. I am also involved in business development, human resources, accounts payable, accounts receivable, search engine optimization, social media engineering, public relations, traffic analytics consultant, a corporate attorney… (laughs). Will it ever slow down? I don’t know. Someday.
“I’ve got some good help with Todd (Grasley), have a supportive wife (Melinda) who has always been there for me, my in-laws (Gary and Sherry Fischer) are accountants—so they help keep the books and do payroll—my parents (Charles and Renee Byrne) who have worked all of the meets, and have business partners (Don Rich and Fred Finke).
“At the Florida level, we’ve stepped up our game, and that’s obvious by looking at our content. With Todd, Ryan Raposo, Jeff Adams, other regular freelancers (Rese Ammons, John Calderon and Alex Budenz), our intern this fall (Josh Cohen), and other amazing volunteers and contributors like yourself, we get a lot more content and I’m proud of that."
Ralph: “But there are challenges?”
Jason: “I wish more people would subscribe. I know that teammates are sharing subscriptions to save a little money, but with that money we could do so much more. For example, I’d like to be at more meets and provide deeper coverage, especially to areas where we currently have ‘holes’.”
Ralph: “A lot of the content does not require a subscription. How big of a problem is this, and how does it hurt the overall coverage?”
Jason: “Only about 1% of our visitors are subscribers. Imagine if we could get that up to 5 or even 10 percent? With that added revenue, we could hire people who could cover every major meet in the state.
“It costs only $3 a month; $36 a year. What greater gift can you give a high school or college freshman than a key to the sport, one that will open doors to knowledge, give them that love and fire for track & field, and with that the success that follows?”
“It’s always a big internal debate for me, as far as what to lock up—for subscribers only—and what to leave free. Ideally, I don’t want to lock up anything, and I think it’s good to get new people involved in the sport and encourage growth by leaving as much open as possible. And of course, I like the traffic numbers that are the result of being free. But we also have to keep the lights on, and make the site pay for itself, so subscriptions are very necessary.”
Ralph: “How many visitors a month do you have right now?”
Jason: “The answer to that is rather complicated. It breaks down to at least three different statistics: visits, unique visitors, and page views.
“A page view is each single page that is served. So when one person clicks on ten different pages, that is ten page views. In the span between mid-September and mid-October of this year, we had 2.6 million (just in Florida). In all of MileSplit, we had about 24 million.
“Each time someone comes to the site is a visit. So a person who comes to the site twice a week might be making eight visits that month. In that same 30 day period—from mid-September to mid-October--we had over 200,000 visits in Florida, and I dunno…somewhere around 2.5 million overall?
“Finally, there are unique visitors. That same person--who comes twice a week and looks at ten pages each time-- is just one unique visitor. Our peak for one month—April to May, 2010—was just over 80,000. We hit around 60,000 monthly uniques during this cross country season. Nationally, our peak is around 850,000 uniques in a month.”
Ralph: “If you could focus on one thing for FLR, what would that be?”
Jason: “As far as my goals for Florida, I hope to be able to hire more staff, and thus have incredible coverage; I would also like to go to more meets and interview more coaches and athletes. Basically, I want to provide more of what we already have.
“I’d also like to build up FLYRA, the Florida Youth Running Association, which supports middle school running. I started the MS Championship in track ten years ago and FLYRA was kind of born out of that.
“Now that we have a platform, I’d like to do more for running, like have a more formal middle school program in Florida, work more with the FACA, get some dedicated cross country courses—we’re currently negotiating for these in two different counties—and maybe get an indoor facility built in Central Florida.
Ralph: “What will be your formula in achieving all this?”
Jason: “I believe in focusing on the product first. You seek to create a product that’s really compelling, and just, in general, doing what’s right. I want to build up the sport, and then seek a profit. That’s what I’m doing with both flrunners and MileSplit. We try to promote the sport, encourage the kids, and make that the focus. And I think the business model follows after you do that, even if you don’t see the direct benefit or return on investment. It comes back to you and if the sport grows, then we grow. My role with MileSplit is more business-oriented and my role with flrunners is more personal to me, and about relationships...if that makes sense.”
Ralph: “Tell me about another of your ideas: RaceTab.”
Jason: “RaceTab has the potential to literally change the sport. And not in just one small step, but to completely change it, and make it more fun.
“RaceTab is a free program that scores the meet and does the results, whether it is cross country, track, or road racing (or soon, snowshoes!).
“It’s actually been out for several years. When we started it, we were just looking for simplicity. At that time, everyone was either usingHytek or was in the ‘stone age’. They were either typing it in some crazy format, like Word or Excel, or just doing it on paper, by hand. Hytek can be too complex for some people, and too expensive for others. So we wanted to provide a very simple to use, cheap (free) alternative for those who were not Hytek users.”
Ralph: “But the goal has changed since then?”
Jason: “Not really changed, but rather evolved. Over the last five years, it has grown more mature, become more robust. It has also acquired a lot of professional users. It is still free, it’s still really simple at its core, but it has more features that satisfy the power users.
“The other meet managers out there were written in the 1990s, and haven’t changed that much. With RaceTab, we’ve balanced simplicity with high-end features. The goal is to make it usable and approachable, whether it is being used by the professional timer, or the elementary school coach doing a dual meet. The bottom line is to make it accessible to those who neither have money nor the expertise, but not be something they need to ‘graduate’ out of using… it still has all the bells and whistles.
“That’s where we are today, but we want to go beyond that, and totally transform the meet experience--make it a live experience, one which you don’t just simply consume, but interact with.
Ralph: “How will that work exactly?”
Jason: “Everyone has smart phones or tablets now with an always-on Internet connection. These are more powerful than the computers of a few years ago. I want to turn these hand-held devices into tools with which to experience and interact with the meet, as it happens.
“We’ll use them both on the consumer end, and the meet management side. I’d like to turn cell phones and tablets into hand-held timers, and then really push the envelope on what can be done with them.”
Ralph: “Replace printed race results sheets?”
Jason: “I hate paper. I’m on a mission to ‘kill paper.’ For example, let’s say you have the field events in a track meet. Currently, the field judge does results on a piece of paper attached to a clipboard. He may write them down with a pen. After the event concludes, it is brought to the timer, who at some point (maybe an hour later) tries to interpret that chicken scratch, and then re-types it into the computer. Eventually, it is printed out and posted on a wall. It is so arcane, slow, and error-prone.
“I want to trade that original clipboard for a tablet or smartphone, and sync it, live, with RaceTab, which will speed that up and come out with instant results… not only for the scorer and timer, but also for the people in the stands and the announcer. I mean those poor field athletes get ignored because the announcer has no clue that someone just jumped 24 feet in the long jump until two hours later. So in my world, we can all listen in, and see those marks as soon as they’re recorded. That’s just one example.”
Ralph: “Sounds rather futuristic, like virtual sports meets reality entertainment. What kind of inspiration motivates you to come up with these kinds of ideas?”
Jason: “I don’t focus too hard on what is already being done. I throw it out and try to re-imagine it. We’re too locked into that ‘old guard.’ I want to discard the old methods, and reinvent the process. In doing that, we can make the sport more interactive and responsive--make it live and participatory.”
Ralph: “I guess you don’t sleep much. And judging from the times posted on your e-mails, that premise wouldn’t be much of a long-shot.”
Jason: “I like to do my programming at night, so I can focus without answering emails and phone calls.”
Ralph: “Soooo, why the new corporate office in Longwood?
Jason: “I mean we all have to grow up sometime. We are growing up as a company and trying to expand the number of our employees and interns, and get more professional. I guess I’m going to have to start sleeping at night and working during the day—in the office—as much as I don’t want to. I’ll have to hire some more developers to help me finish the grand vision (currently just me and one other developer, who is based in Oregon).”
Ralph: “We’ve talked extensively about the past, and the present-to-near future. After you’ve cleared your ‘mental outbox,’ what’s next?”
Jason: “Oh man... I want to ride this wave as far as I can for now and make as big a difference as I can, and see as much of the vision in my head come into being.
“What’s next after MileSplit? I mean, Todd doesn’t even like me to talk about that possibility. He says he likes working for me for some reason (laughs). We’ll see. I mean, we’re talking five or ten years from now, and I don’t think I can plan that far out. Life and technology change too much and too quickly.
“But I guess I would describe myself as a serial entrepreneur. And if I ever felt like my goals had been achieved here—that I had done what I set out to do, and have a good opportunity to exit-- then I may take it.
“Maybe I’ll coach. I doubt I’d relax… but certainly start a new business. I have no idea what. It could be anything. Talking business makes me happy, building a business is exciting. I like new challenges. I like doing something that matters to people and makes a difference in their lives. It’s a big risk-reward equation also. I love the idea of dreaming big, taking an idea, and making it happen, or at least fall on your butt trying. That is what motivates me.”
Ralph: “If you were to move on, more’s the pity for us, but what you’ve done so far—and continue to do on a daily basis—has already transformed the world of running beyond anything that could have been envisioned even a decade ago.”
Jason: “Thanks a lot, Ralph. Now I gotta get going. You can see yourself out (only joking).”
Bonus Material
Screen shots from the site over the years, courtesy of archive.org and the Way Back Machine. If you're interested, I have an entire album of these for more views of the evolution.
