Check it out... we are on the Lululemon website as the Harvard Square showroom local running ambassadors...

Molly from Hint Water stopped by the Harvard Square Lululemon Showroom on Sunday to introduce us to her many fine flavors. My personal favorite was the watermelon. Their name doesn't lie... If you are looking for a drink of pure clean spring water with a hint of your favorite fruit- Hint Water is for you. No artificial flavors, additives, or sugar. And no calories. Molly you are welcome to come to our group runs anytime!

That's right, you can call us RunBoston LLC now... Overall the process was fairly painless.

Well, we have now made it to 5th on the "Things to do" in Boston on our beloved Tripadvisor... This has yielded us a plethora of tours over the next two weeks. It's going to be a busy August! Thank you Tripadvisor!

Today RunBoston made it to #9 of almost 300 things to do in Boston. CHECK IT OUT HERE!

Runboston made it to #13 on TripAdvisor's "things to do" in Boston. Come on, give us a good review, you know you want to!

For over 6 months we have been using Yelp to manage our reviews, but because of the algorithm they use to manage their reviews, they have filtered out all of our reviews. The reason for this is very simple: They assume that if you have only reviewed only one business- you are a spammer. Being that a good majority of our running buddies are from out of the country, they have no idea what yelp is... Upon asking them to write reviews of us, they're immediately identified as spam, and discarded.

Therefore, we have switched our reviews to Tripadvisor. They encourage you to ask your customers for reviews... If you have been on a tour with us, or are just feeling generous, GIVE US A REVIEW.

We met some lovely ladies from the Four Seasons hotel this morning down at the Prudential Lulu and it looks like we will be helping them mark the course for next weekend's Run For Hope. This 5K will contribute all proceeds directly to pediatric cancer care and research at the Massachusetts General Hospital for Children and the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center. We hope to see you out there on race day. See the website for more information.

Today we also found that a local gentleman is now offering jogging tours of the Freedom Trail. His website can be found at mybostontour.com. This site is new as of May 2010. It seems that people must sign up for Saturday or Sunday tours at designated times.

Friend of RunBoston, Ben Haber, just wrote a great article about our FREE upcoming group run from lululemon.... Check it out here.

Don't miss our 1st monthly FREE group run from Lululemon this coming Saturday @11. Meet us outside the Prudential store and run the 5 miles to the Harvard Square Lulu showroom... We are calling it Lulu to Lulu. And if you wish, after you can join us for brunch at Tommy Doyles!

Invite others! Come run with RunBoston!

We hope to see you there!

Thanks for the great tour this morning, Shelley! Good company, great weather, and a great warm-up for tomorrow's Run to Remember. If anyone is out for tomorrow's half marathon through Boston, look for the RB shamrock and say hello!

Also in recent news, the Harvard Square showroom at Lululemon has officially named us as their local ambassadors. You can see that info HERE. I'll have to admit to only wearing my lulu gear on all of our runs... it's comfortable, it's flattering, and it breathes!

Lastly, another running tour company, City Running Tours, is now advertising that they offer tours in Boston. I figured one day they would try to come to Boston. What you'll find after going to their website is that they primarily offer periodic group runs through the city for a flat rate, though they are also starting to offer (in our minds, somewhat overpriced) personalized tours, too. Despite their relatively new presence in Boston, their website appears above ours now in a Google search for "Boston Running Tour."

More to come in this busy busy springtime, as we continue to work with the awesome folks at Lululemon, and work on setting up a local running club and hopefully a few more free fun runs!

JP & AP

I'd like to take a few shameless moments to congratulate both the two co-founders of RunBoston, Abby and Jared, on their wedding this past weekend. It was Amazing. Here is to many more memories, both running and otherwise...

Hi there folks. More tours for RunBoston this weekend... the Lululemon 5K from Harvard Square... the Marathon Expo... and volunteering for the Dana Farber Marathon Challenge group. It's been pretty busy.

We found out on Saturday that we are going to be the local ambassadors for the Harvard Square Lululemon store. How cool is that?

Have a great Marathon Monday Boston!

Come join us this weekend when we take the customers of Lululemon on a 5K run around the Charles River. Psst... It's free!

Today we spent a good majority of our time redesigning our website... what do you think?



We also ordered some new brochures... The combination of these two things can mean only one thing- a guerilla marketing campaign is about to begin for Runboston

On April 17, we will be putting on a 5K with lululemon in Harvard Square. I will be putting up more information on that race when I have it. But tonight we visited their store, and picked up some running gear. Let me tell you... this stuff is nice! Check them out...

What do you guys think of our new logo... a new website will follow.

Today we received confirmation that we will be a beta tester for SquareUp... This is a great thing for us, as we will be able to take credit card payments with our iphones- at the time of the runs. It's a another great idea by the creator of twitter.



We also began a logo design contest on 99designs.com for a new logo. Next week I will post the winner's design! Here is one of the ones we like so far...

In the last two weeks we have scheduled three runs, a possible running club for local gym, and a 5K length fun run. People are coming out of their winter exercise slumber and getting in some miles. We look forward to what the future holds for RunBoston. Be on the lookout for our new logo, as that is in the works!

RunBoston is very happy to be partnering with QRST for our tshirts and RunKeeper for our run tracking!

Check out their sites for more info!

If you get a chance, please give us a favorable review on Yelp!

http://www.yelp.com/biz/runboston-cambridge

I got tired of sending nasty plain text emails to our hotel partners, so the other day I sought out MailChimp... and produced THIS! Granted, some of the links don't work, but hey, not bad for the first email...

Ben Habr of Examiner.com wrote a very nice article about us. Check it out HERE.

A big thanks to Ben, and kudos to him for recognizing a "good thing."

Check out our new pricing information HERE.

Today Abby and I picked our brochures up from FedEx up in Wilmington. We then spent the rest of the day delivering them to our 13 hotel partners. We had some great conversations with the folks at the hotels.

We think things are going to get busy... Our plan is to staff our runs together until the spring. Once the warmer weather sets in, we think we will be busy enough to begin hiring running guides.

This is pretty exciting for us.

Runboston is the first company to start a running tour company in Boston. Upon doing the market research to start our company up, we came across some other folks who have had similar ideas. Take a look:

www.bostonruns.com
Owned by a local young man. Purchased in 2006. The domain is listed as "Under Construction", however, he cwreated a facebook group in 2009. The domain name expires in May of 2011.

www.bostonrunningtours.com
An Irish man who owns an Irish running tour company bought this domain. The site is currently "Under Construction." The domain name expires in January of 2010.

www.runboston.com
A local man has owned this domain name since 1998 and wants to do something with it one day. This site is currently "Under Construction." This domain name expires in January of 2010.

www.bostonrunningtour.com
A downtown-dwelling young couple own this domain and want to create a running tour company, like us... Their site is currently "Under Construction." This domain expires in September of 2010.

www.bostonruns.org and www.bostonrunningtour.org
Both domains are still available. We may or may not purchase them.

And the numerous blogs that have, at one time or another, discussed this concept...
http://blog.mpdaugherty.com/2009/08/02/exciting-new-running-site/
http://absolutlyfit.blogspot.com/2008/02/random-thoughts-on-friday.html
http://cambridgex.blogspot.com/2009/04/just-runnnnning-in-rain.html
http://sugarbugblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/running-toursyeah-right.html

So far, the following hotels are interested in partnering with us:

Le Meridien
Liberty Hotel
Hotel Marlowe
XV Beacon Hotel
Nine Zero
The Onyx Hotel
Fairmont Battery Wharf Boston
Copley Square Hotel
Taj Boston
Mandarin Oriental Boston
The Langham Boston
The Fairmont Copley Plaza Hotel
The Westin Boston Waterfront

Abby and I just ordered our first brochures. 300 in total... These will go out to area hotels and running stores. If you see them out and about, feel free to drop us a line...

I did it... I bought some Yahoo and Google advertising space online. Here is what it should look like... Did you notice that my ad isn't the one listed :)

Today we purchased bostonrunningtours.org. Now we just need to advertise ;)
Wish us luck... here this will help!

Here it is folks- the first race where Abby and I ran in our RunBoston shirts. Hopefully many more to come!

Take a look at our new tshirt designs available under our Merchandising link.