Fast Running Blog

As a strange person that overanalyzes numbers I noticed a couple of interesting trends. First, the mileage board is less competitive thas year compared to last year. Having run almost identical mileage this Jan/Feb to last Jan/Feb I currently am #14 on the yearly rank, last year I was #17. Second observation, less discussion forum posts in the last few months compared to the same months last year.

There could be a lot of reasons for these two observations, but if the blog is growing I would expect to see opposite trends.

Possible theories. Novelty wore off and people quit. Combination of injuries and changes in training styles leading to less miles. Utah market is saturated and the growth elsewhere is slow. Random variation. We can blame it on the economy, that's the current "in" thing to do.

Also I seem to sense less of the "team" feeling this year. What happened to the relays, etc.

Maybe I need to do some recruiting.

Any other ideas or input?

Viva la fastrunningblog!!!!!!!!!

The fastrunningblog lives in you.

Regarding relays, I think they were just the flavor of the month for a while, and people got burned out on them. Fielding two teams for Wasatch Back turned out to be a lot of stress and bickering, and I think that was the straw that broke the camel's back.

Regarding the blog in general, I think when something reaches a certain size, it loses it's family feel. It is certainly different and less intimate now than it was a couple years ago, when there were less than 100 members. But that's just the way it goes, and a natural by-product of huge growth. The positive to all this is that I squander far less time on the blog. I still check the message board every day, but there are very few people who I try to keep up with on their actual blog.

Amen to Paul's response.  I feel the same way.

Ditto.

I have similar feelings as Paul, Cody, and Jon.  I've met quite a few new people through the blog and I've had some enjoyable experiences being involved in different races, parties, and events.  As far as the relays and race teams, though fun to be a part of, I can understand how those things could become financial burdens and stressful for those involved in organizing and sponsoring.  I continue to blog, mainly because I like the ability to track my workouts on the computer, at this point if someone comments on my blog I view it as an added bonus.  I still try to follow the blogs of some of my closer friends, but don't spend near the amount of time I did a few years ago.

With relays it is very simple. Last year we had comps through Paul.  This year he does not have them. I offered Ragnar people to trade some web development work for comps twice, but did not get as little as a reply to my e-mails. I will not expect people that are feeding families and often barely making ends meet to pay $100 each to be gone from their families just so we could get some publicity. Having to take time off work and be gone is big enough of a sacrifice to ask for already. No comp - we do not send a team.

With the mileage board - I think people are realizing that there is only a marginal difference between 90 and 130 a week. Most runners will develop enough aerobically at 100 miles a week to become limited by the neuro-muscular aspect instead of aerobic. Neuro-muscular problems of this kind  cannot be fixed via high mileage. In the early days of the blog the majority of the runners were limited aerobically. To a certain extent this is still the case, but more and more runners are starting to hit the neuro-muscular plateau, or in other words they do not have enough Quality X to use their current aerobic power. After a year of that plateau some common sense begins to settle in, so you will see a reduction in mileage.

I'm injured :'(

What about other social networking sites that eat up our online time? That's the issue for me. I have more and more friends/family on Facebook now, so I spend my extra 20 min/day on there, which leaves less time on the blog.

And I'm a wreck. I think we've nailed the problem: Clyde and I aren't pulling our weight anymore.  >:(

Add in Logan not being 100% and there you have some of the top guys off the mileage board. Some of us have discussed taking up other hobbies. A few weeks ago Wildbull, Steve Hooper, and Myself thought pretty hard about just bagging the long Saturday run and going to IHOP instead.  I think we even ran around the parking lot a few times, before we continued on with our run.

I agree with Paul and the boys plus injury and winter time put this bloggin thing on the back burner.  Not to mention extra added stress.
Paul I laughed my pant off at you new little picture thing :D

As someone who is new to this blog (and wasn't around when there was a tight-knit feel to it), I would say the blog is doing a great service for me and obviously serving many more people than it used to. Maybe the blog needs some type of group feature so that people who know each other or run together can have their own "small-town feel" to it but still have accessibility to the larger community. I guess you can kind of already do that by putting a link to someone's blog on your blog, but I'm thinking of something more structured. Probably one of many ideas that could be added to the blog if Sasha had an infinite amount of time to put into it.

Oh man Josse I just saw Paul's little picture and was cracking up!

I think alot of us have attempted higher mileage and have gotten injuries.  Higher mileage is tantamount to mandatory for reaching your potential, but there is a risk/reward trade off.  I try to train smart and reduce the risk of injury, but the risk is always there, and it increases (exponentially?  not sure I would go that far) with mileage.  I think it is worth risking injury to know and experience your limits, but I do think that may be part of the reason why our blog's mileage board is experiencing lower numbers at the top right now.  Watch out, though, I intend to roar this summer. ;)

Michelle- I find it interesting that a lot of the high-mileage people who are injured only took a week or so off after the fall marathons (you, Logan, Clyde).  And those who tried to train for a winter marathon didn't have great success, either.  I think the marathon took more out of us than usual, and we never really recovered.  Just a thought.

It's true I took a week off, but that was the most I have ever taken off after a marathon.  It was a mid season marathon for me.  Perhaps my season was too long (nine months).  I'm going to start a new topic about this because I think its interesting but not on topic.

It is interesting to read the opinions of some of the people that have been on this blog for quite some time.

There are several of us that just started using the blog last summer and many of us have kind of formed our own little group.  We are not on the FRB team, but we are runners that are learning and growing.

I think that you will probably see several small offshoots of user groups with people banding together based upon speed, training, location, interests, etc.

Maurine- that is great, we love to see all kinds of FRB-ers joining together to support each other.  I know I have a few groups of people I follow based on ability and geography. 

Please note that was Jon's 666 entry - hmmm?!

Dave, I'm glad Jon moved up in number.
Adding my voice to the chorus I think the injuries really sapped a few of us. I look on a lot of the blogs that I used to follow daily and notice no races since STG. I think the combination of such a hard year climaxing in such a crappy race for many just killed motivation. I also notice as far as the discussion board goes there are now so many good old threads that some of the "hottest" topics have already been covered so the old-timers do not bring those issues up again. I'm hoping that as the weather gets nicer the sun will help liven things up a bit. Also it seems like many of the injured (self included) are getting past their demons and back to it so I'm looking forward to some regained drive. However, I don't think we should count out those still pounding the pavement. Jeff has been amazing this winter and obviously from the number of posts by Paul and Jon the true founders are alive and kicking.
Michelle, I didn't notice the penguin until I read your post. Paul that is so funny...

Well, for me it was my first experience with a Cache Valley winter.  IT SUCKS!  Not that I'm some big runner dude that's on the top page of the mileage board all the time and gets noticed when I don't put in the miles, but yeah.  It's getting better though.  I'm sure next year when I know what I'm in for I will be more motivated.  haha

Wimp...  ;)

It takes a true runner to survive all winter running in Logan.  Although I'm sure some Canadien or Alaskan is gonna pipe up soon and put us all to shame...

I've been a member of the Blog for about a year now and I'm so glad that I joined. It sucked running "alone" my first 6 months or so in Utah after running with a team for 8 straight years. Even if it isn't as tight knit as it once was, there's still a pretty strong sense of community. Maybe we could brainstorm some ways to make it better. We could have a "fastrunning blog monthly news and notes" section where we would highlight peoples accomplishments of all levels. Just throwing it out there.

Perhaps a fastrunningblog wiki? I wouldn't know what to put on it, but wiki's are all the rage right now.

Paul -great idea. Wiki on the ToDo list.