Share My Daily Mile: Running and Social Networking

Humans have lost the battle against online social networking.  It will never go away.  Those who haven’t started yet may have convinced themselves they’re receiving a gift in living off the grid, but their resistance is futile and those of us who have a head start will definitely be more apt to survive the eventual (possibly forthcoming?) singularity.

People are asking me these days, “Hey, Jeff, you on Daily Mile?”

“On wha?”

“Daily Mile.”

Two minutes, three seconds and one Wikipedia entry later, and I had gathered that the Daily Mile is a social networking site for runners where users post their workouts.

And so… what’s the point of this?  I asked myself.

Is there a point?

What does it matter to me, a 3:20 marathoner, what Jack the 2:59 marathoner or Mitchell the 5:40 marathoner are doing in their workouts?  Why do I care?  How can their workouts possibly be of any interest to me?

They can’t be.  Not for me anyway.  But they are useful to some people, so I hear.  That’s why they exist.

But not for me.  I treat my log books like ancient fortuitous oracles — penned spells of lucid wisdom with magical properties.  I can remember a workout almost as soon as I read the entry for that day, whether it was a year ago or yesterday.  I take mental snapshots of each run and that’s what I record.

Ya can’t quite share THAT with the folks on YouFace and BookTube.