{"id":215,"date":"2018-03-29T19:15:24","date_gmt":"2018-03-29T23:15:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.salticid.com\/marathon\/?p=215"},"modified":"2018-03-30T08:54:01","modified_gmt":"2018-03-30T12:54:01","slug":"why-blog-about-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/marathon\/2018\/03\/why-blog-about-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Why blog about it?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When I started this blog about my Steamtown marathon experience, in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/marathon\/?m=200403\">March 2004<\/a>, blogging was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rebeccablood.net\/essays\/weblog_history.html\">very well-established<\/a> already (I had Blogger to use and didn&#8217;t have to hand-code all the links!), but not so ubiquitous that every possible niche was overfull. I found the original <a href=\"http:\/\/completerunning.com\/history-of-the-running-blog-family\/\">Running Blog Family<\/a>, or they found me, that summer, and wow, mine is one of the few on that list of 35 founders that still exists (not continuously because the Blogger &#8211;&gt; WordPress multisite -&gt; regular WordPress migration resulted in years of outages)&#8212;but I can&#8217;t imagine how many running blogs there must be now. Even &#8220;marathon blog&#8221; in quotes gets 43K+ results. Back in 2004 I didn&#8217;t expect many readers and my expectations were confirmed. Why on earth blog now? In order of likelihood:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Primarily for me, as a journal. The platform gives me links and search and cloud storage and images and legibility, all missing from my (still-extant) handwritten journal, so that I can refer back to how my training went etc. As an <a href=\"https:\/\/gretchenrubin.com\/2017\/05\/get-something-done-accountability\">Obliger<\/a> (Gretchen Rubin&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/gretchenrubin.com\/take-the-quiz\">classification<\/a> which I personally find very helpful), the public-even-if-nobody-reads aspect is enough of an external obligation to get me to finish and somewhat-polish the writing, which is really tough for me otherwise. The Rochester marathon is a blur in comparison with Steamtown&#8212;partly because it wasn&#8217;t the first time around, but I think mainly because the exercise of writing and the ability to re-read cemented the memories in a way non-documented recall just doesn&#8217;t. It even feels more recent in time, in a weird way! And finally because the discipline of writing is inherently good for me. I&#8217;ve finished one book (unpublished, natch) and have two more projects in the works; the act of describing anything in words, whether it&#8217;s a real or imagined scene, uses the same muscles.<\/li>\n<li>A distant second (because everyone is so busy): for friends and family who might be interested.<\/li>\n<li>Even more unlikely: for web searchers who might find something useful (I&#8217;ll design my own training schedule, and post about using dates instead of energy drink, minimal shoes, etc.). My <a href=\"http:\/\/www.salticid.com\/concentration.htm\">concentration grid game<\/a> actually gets a few thousand visits a month so it&#8217;s not impossible, but it was up continuously since 2004, and the search stats for any of my blogs are quite pathetic.<\/li>\n<li>Finally and least likely: I will always remember how much <a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20050209120458\/http:\/\/marathon.cheezblok.com:80\/\">Hollie&#8217;s 2003 marathon blog<\/a> (long long gone) helped and inspired me, and maybe there&#8217;s one person out there who needs something like that and will find this. I loved her level of detail and her frankness, and it convinced me I could do it. Really, truly, if you can run at all you can complete a marathon&#8212;although I always follow that up by saying you shouldn&#8217;t force yourself if you don&#8217;t like running!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I started this blog about my Steamtown marathon experience, in March 2004, blogging was very well-established already (I had Blogger to use and didn&#8217;t have to hand-code all the links!), but not so ubiquitous that every possible niche was overfull. I found the original Running Blog Family, or they found me, that summer, and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/marathon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/marathon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/marathon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/marathon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/marathon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/marathon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":222,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/marathon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215\/revisions\/222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/marathon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/marathon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/marathon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}