Had a run stats table like this, for every time I've run in runuary 1... here it is from 3rd January last year... it's a fairly neat table that goes into the source of this blog like this, in markdown:
| date | '19 | '20 | '21 | '22 | '23 | '24 | 2025
|-------|------|-------|------|------|------|------|------
| 01/01 | 5'54 | 4'20 | 4'52 | 5'09 | 6'15 | 5'43 | 5'32
| 02/01 | | 15'49 | 4'47 | 5'11 | 5'03 | 5'27 | 5'14
| 03/01 | 5'13 | 5'42 | 4'42 | 5'17 | 5'40 | 5'48 | 5'10and comes out again like this in html:
| date | '19 | '20 | '21 | '22 | '23 | '24 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01/01 | 5'54 | 4'20 | 4'52 | 5'09 | 6'15 | 5'43 | 5'32 |
| 02/01 | 15'49 | 4'47 | 5'11 | 5'03 | 5'27 | 5'14 | |
| 03/01 | 5'13 | 5'42 | 4'42 | 5'17 | 5'40 | 5'48 | 5'10 |
See the markdown is just plain text but is recognisable as a table still. Converting it to html doesn't really add a lot.
I have been compromising and squeezing it up and trying to fit more info in, but am running out of space. This year there's a new column for 2026, and that table is too wide for my mobile phone screen. Maybe not for your mobile phone screen, but I don't like the content scrolling off to the side. So I've redone it now in SVG. This is Scalable Vector Graphics and it's a way of describing an image in xml, much like how we describe the layout of the page. Means I have a lot more control, but it's still accessible, the content is still text in the source of the page. It's not "just" an image. It's working well for me, as (duh) it scales. It now looks like this
All of those tables are now frozen in time, they will not update as I add more details 2.
And though the source of the page is a bit more complex (mostly because of the wobbly lines I like to use there) it's still manageable. That's 3.5kb of html for 3 days of data, I could simplify it A LOT with straight lines and simpler styling 3 4, but that's fine.
I use SVG to do the other graphs here, the energy usage graph and the weekly run / step count / exercise graph, so I have lots more options. I could add all sorts of graphics in there, but don't need to.
Yes ironic, it had got a bit too messy, so I solved that by making it even more messy.
That was Saturday night's coding, because of not drinking.
Another waste-of-time styling change on the blog is I've merged the "glossary" part, that added "runuary 1: running every day in January" etc with the footnotes 5, so it will automatically add footnotes to made up words like runuary 1 and dryanuary 6. Yes it is a bit Terry Pratchett 7
Now wife is at the gym and I'm waiting for the shopping to arrive (and the temperature to get above freezing) before I go out for today's run. Boys are starting to move upstairs, they have plenty to do today before going back to school tomorrow.
It's supposed to be above freezing now (just gone 11am as I update this) but it says "feels like -5℃"... it's only the pleasure I will get from seeing the new run stats appearing on this page that is going to get me out there. Let's go!
Sunny and a gentle breeze, -3 - 1℃.
Paulʼs blog - I live near Folkestone in the deep South. Married + father to two, I am a full stack web developr, and I do js / nodejs, some ruby, python, php ect ect. My hobbies are pubs, parkrun, restaurants, home-automation 🤖 and other diy jiggery-pokery, history, family tree stuff, television, squirrels, pirates, lego, + TIME TRAVEL.
🏷 svg 🏷 not drinking 🏷 dryanuary 🏷 work 🏷 5k 🏷 school 🏷 terry pratchett
Yep, deliberately unstyled.