Running 2.0
While running Bay to Breakers last weekend as part of the Asics Aggies Centipede, (If you don’t know what a centipede is in this context, click here) I came to the realization that there is truly no better time to be a runner than the present. Discounting scientific advances that have bettered our understanding of human physiology and training techniques, the fact that my best time for the mile would have had me ranked number 1 in the world as recently as the 1910′s and that (some) modern professional runners can make millions of dollars doing it, Web 2.0 has had a profound, positive impact on the running community.
I use a Web site called running2win to keep track of my training. My college teammates are on the same site and it allows us to follow each other’s progress, offer comments and encouragement and plan group runs and other activities. Our coach was able to log-in and view graphs and charts that tracked total distance run, the average pace of runs and overall improvement.
Even a mere decade ago, track fans were forced to wait days or even weeks for race results to be published and distributed. This was true even of the most prestigious events – let alone your local 5k or half-marathon. Now, it’s nearly unheard of for race results not to be immediately available online. But it gets better. A friend of mine ran this year’s Boston Marathon and plugged my email address into the marathon’s site so that I would receive automatic updates with his times at the 10 kilometer, half-marathon and 30 kilometer points.
RSS-style updates don’t satisfy you? Companies like MediaZone allow you to watch the race in live, streaming video while companies like Flotrack have taken advantage of the ease with which it is possible to upload and share videos and travel around the country and world filming races and interviewing athletes. Whereas previously it was impossible to watch anything longer than a sprint on television without being interrupted for commercial breaks (if the track meet was even televised to begin with), enthusiasts can watch even the longest distance events wholly uninterrupted.
After the race you can go to the message boards on a site like LetsRun.com – that boasts over 200,000 monthly visits – to discuss the latest results, our predictions for races, training techniques, how to prevent/heal injuries and all forms of running-related gossip.
These topics are boring to most people. They don’t care that shoe X weighs 1.3 ounces less than shoe Y, whether you should warm-up on a track running clockwise or counterclockwise or how an obscure Kenyan name is truly supposed to be pronounced. But we do.
We runners are clearly a weird bunch when compared to the general population. When I said at the top of my post that Web 2.0 has had a profound positive impact on the running community, it would actually be more truthful to say that Web 2.0 enabled there to BE a running community. The interactive Web has provided a forum for uniting the global diaspora of runners where previous communities were limited to small and scattered groups of fanatics.
Not only have these developments allowed runners to dive into all aspects of the sport in unprecedented depth, but they’ve made the sport more accessible to the general population as well. It has never been easier for a wannabe-marathoner to find a community of like-minded (and like-bodied) people to train with. As it does with many things, Web 2.0 has expanded the depth and breadth of participation.
Ultimately, it’s pretty amazing to see how the world’s latest technological advances are applied to to its oldest and most basic form of competition.
So next time you see someone running and feel the urge to yell, “Run, Forrest, run!” or harass him/her in any other way, remember: there are a lot of us out there. Now we know it, and we mean business.