Happy Blogiversary!! Hard to believe that it has been 2 years of blogging about my running adventures. Thank you for making it possible. I appreciate your comments, feedback, and thoughts throughout the journey.
As a treat I’ve picked 5 highlights/blog posts from the last two years (out of almost 500) to share with you as a special present. This was no easy task so I hope you appreciate them!
1) Completing my first marathon and dedicating it to my African friends by raising money for World Vision.
At the beginning of a new year it is always good to reflect back on the previous year and figure out things that worked and things that didn’t work. This way you can make changes to improve yourself in the upcoming year. One of the things that I’ve realized in the past few weeks is that I devote a lot of time to running. I actually only spent 1/52 of 2008 physically running (that’s one week), but if you count all of the additional time required – preparing, driving, stretching, core workouts, cool down, and getting cleaned up, the act of running begins to greatly expand. It might be safe to assume that with all of the above included running takes about 1/26th of your time (2 weeks).
Yes but that still isn’t a lot of time, true true. Sleeping takes up over 17 weeks a year. Work takes up another 12. Both numbers assume you work and sleep on average 8 hours a day. So that right there is 29/52 weeks of your year.
Other set things in my schedule include attending church which is about 1 week a year, teaching ESL which is also about 1 week.
I would project that blogging both here and on my personal blog consumes at least 2 weeks a year worth of time. That includes research, writing, editing, commenting on other’s blogs and being involved in the online community of bloggers. We are now up to 33 of my 52 weeks. If you throw in e-mail, my blog reader, and other social networking I’d estimate that I up to 36 weeks.
What does all this mean? All of this means that I spend almost 3/4 of my time away from my beautiful wife doing things for me! I would love to be able to blog and be engaged in the social networking as a full time job, but that isn’t really a reality for me. It is hard to admit because I enjoy it so much.
Ok, so the point of this long post is to say that I’m adjusting my posting schedule. Most of you know that I currently post 5 days a week. I’m going to change that to 3 days a week, keeping the week in review on Mondays and Foto Friday. This hopefully means you will get a high quality post on Wednesdays! I will have the freedom to post on Tuesday or Thursday if I so desire or if something timely comes up.
Thank you to my faithful readers for your support and feedback. Please keep it coming and I look forward to a great 2009, in running and all the areas of our lives!
Welcome to the New Year!!! We here at Team Cross wish you a wonderful and blessed 2009. It is hard to imagine what is going to happen in the new year, there is always so much potential with the beginning of a new year.
This is a good time to think about what is coming up and also to reflect on where your life is going. I’ll be honest I haven’t thought too much about specifics for 2009 or really examined my goals from 2008. I do know that I didn’t meet any of my time goals but I did PR in many races which is great.
What are your plans for 2009?
I’m currently planning on running both a spring and fall marathon although the details of both are still fuzzy. I would like to PR and break all of my time goals from 2008:
5K – sub 18:00
10K – sub 40:00
Half-Marathon – sub 1:30
Marathon – 3:10 (Boston Qualifying)
2008 Yearly Mileage
Running – 1374.2 miles or 177 hours or just over a week!
Last week I wrote about the great tool, Twitter. I mentioned it was great for building friendships and community with runners and other people. One of the great ways to build discussion around a specific topic or event on the web is by using tags. I use tags all the time on this blog to make sure others looking for something about running can find it easily.
With Twitter you are able to tag your tweets as part of a broader discussion using something called a hashtag. One of the popular uses of Twitter is during conferences or meetings to help broadcast what is going on or for possible meetups. To help facilitate this happening someone decided to start using hashtags to make searching for related tweets easier. A hastag is simply using the hashmark or pound symbol (#) before a series of letters. It was made really popular during the San Diego fire and was being used for the Iowa flooding. If you go to a Twitter search engine such as Summize (now Twitter Search) and searched for the hashtag #IowaFlood you’ll get hundreds of Tweets about the flooding.
Why is this important? Every major group, organization, conferences, etc has a hashtag. As of today I haven’t seen any for running. I think it would be nice to find other Twittering runners and see how their workout went. Most of the runners I follow on Twitter tweet a summary of their daily run or race report.
I was going to propose the already famous ORN be used for a hashtag, but a quick search pulled up some unsavory content – add a “p” to the beginning. So, let’s scratch that idea! Back to the drawing boards, I did some more research and found that some people had already started using #run, but that is a little simplistic and maybe boring! Then I came along a tweet from @runnershigh that #runlog is being used by Twemes to create Twitter Running Meme. Twemes also allows you to get an RSS feed of tweets posted with the hashtag.
Therefore, I propose that from here on out we all use #runlog to tag running posts.
Anyone else have thoughts on a better hashtag?
Used appropriately I think this would be a great addition to our running community. Step One: For it to work properly you should follow @hashtags on your Twitter account. This will help facilitate the hashtags bot to find your tweet and index it in their service. Step Two: Start using #runlog. Step Three: Use the Twitter search engine of your choice to find out how other runners ran today. I recommend Summize (now Twitter Search) or Tweetscan. You can also use the RSS feed from Tweme.
Can you do it? I’ve been using it for awhile now and a few others have picked up on it. You can follow my Twitter Running Log here at Hashtags, or via Summize, or at Twemes.
Note:According to hashtags.org their service has been broken since July 10, due to a Twitter-side error. You can continue using the #runlog though and it will make it easier to search for. And the service should resume normal processing eventually!
Many of us in the Running Blog Family have taken advantage of new fangled technology called Twitter. Many runners probably first learned about Twittering from the podcaster Steve Runner who, with the help of his son, twittered his way through this year’s Boston Marathon.
My “twitterverse” or my universe of Twitter has quickly grown with lots of running friends, most of whom I’ve never met except through blogging and e-mail. In the past month or so that I’ve been active in Twitter I’ve encouraged other runners and they have encouraged me. Especially after finding this blog post with a list of running tweeps.
So What is Twitter? Simply, Twitter is the most popular micro-blogging site on the web. The official definition is:
Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?
Twitter will help you fill in the gaps in-between blog posts about what is going on in your friend’s lives. Common Craft has a great video that might help you understand Twitter a little better.
Still not convinced you need Twitter? This article written by a CEO Twitterer is what convinced me to take the leap and now I’m hooked to this 140 character phenom. I say go on over and try it out today!
I will say that initially I used Twitter every few hours, but now have gotten into a more realistic mode of posting every few hours and tend to post more highlights, while many people post lots of little details of their day. I have also seen tons of encouraging tweets from runners to other runners who are struggling to get on the road or with other personal issues. If you have 5 minutes a day and want to meet some other great runners and people -- Twitter is the way to go. It might be a little over-hyped but it is a great tool.
If you could only go to one website a day to find out all the latest information about running what would it be? Aww shuck you didn’t have to say this one!
Seriously though…
Check out one of the newest sections at Alltop – running.alltop. Since June 1, 2008 Alltop.com has been collecting feeds from various running related blogs into their nicely laid out site. You can go to the page and see the last 5 posts from 72 different running blogs. That is a lot of blogs but it also a lot of good information!
Some of the blogs are personal training logs while others are great resources such as The Final Sprint, Runnerville, Team Cross Runs, Run to Win, Runner’s Lounge, Nike, Cool Running, and The Complete Running Network.
So you get the idea there is a plethora of information. Overloaded? You can actually close out some of the feeds so it is less distracting.
Be sure to head on over and at least give it a look. They are constantly adding new sites all the time.
Happy Blogiversary!! Hard to believe that it has been 2 years of blogging about my running adventures. Thank you for making it possible. I appreciate your comments, feedback, and thoughts throughout the journey.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=d39edb17-7e64-4ec0-bfc3-b4ca45b98b0c)
Today may you have a wonderful day with family. We wish you a wonderful and Merry Christmas.
Last week I ![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=7cd3df39-e9d4-4dc5-861a-a9caefddbddd)
Many of us in the Running Blog Family have taken advantage of new fangled technology called 
Check out one of the newest sections at Alltop – 
SEO Powered by Platinum SEO from Techblissonline