Running and Blogging

I do not yet have a Facebook account. I am not sure why. My wife has one, my brother, my mom - why not me? I guess its because I am unsure why anyone would want to read about me and the things I am doing. But I am writing here, aren't I?

Well, this post is my first in close to one year. I had only created this Blogger account to publish some draft versions of a data visualization project I had in grad school. I have since graduated and hadn't thought of blogging until recently when I got bit by the running bug.

I started to keep a pretty detailed journal of my training after I started my training for the Maryland Double (the Frederick and Baltimore Running Festival marathons) this year. I have regularly read the forums on active.com since registering for the Baltimore Running Festival's Half-Marathon in 2008 to stay informed and energized about the race. So, since active.com provided members with blogging software I began to log my training with their training tool and journal my experiences with their blogging software. Inevitably, I wanted to do a better job, publish a better experience.

Active's blogging software left a few things to be desired. I cannot add persistent images and widgets like, JavaScript embedded content. So naturally I started to search for other people who keep a journal of their running lifestyle. The first one I stumbled upon was tim-purerunning here on Blogger. His blog gave me the inspiration to go deeper into this blogging thing since I now have a running hobby.

Since for once in my life I have a hobby that I am striving to perfect I have something to talk about (share) with others. Unlike football and basketball, I actually have been setting goals, practicing, reading books and seeking knowledge about how to improve in running. I have spent a fair amount of time perfecting my career skills, but it hasn't been something I spent a lot of time socializing. So, that is why I blog. I am blogging about my running for now, but I am actually going to have to figure out how to incorporate my other passionate interests. I hope that some of you have read this far and might be interested enough to follow me - it would be a great encouragement if I found that someone else found my writing useful or wished to provide helpful pointers.