Reader Responses and Upcoming Races

I am not a selfish person, at least I like to pretend I’m not; which is why from time to time, I like to take the pulse of my readership, a poll if you will, just to hear what it is on their mind and what concerns them because ultimately what concerns them should be what concerns me.

I thought a lot about how this should be done. I could throw out a bunch of questions and ask for responses but then I remembered back to grade school when the teacher asked you to put you head down and throw up your hand to pick door monitor from the three kids standing in the front of the class and you’d cheat by sneaking a peek at who the cool kids were picking and so I’m thinking that wasn’t a very democratic process. Then I thought maybe I could just publish a poll and ask people to pick from a list of choices, but then again, I’d be limiting myself to the kind of responses I could get, so that wouldn’t solve my problem either. Eventually, I settled on this. Just throwing a list of 25 Random Running Facts about Me out into the blogosphere with no introduction or instructions and seeing what random feedback I’d get. I figured people would volunteer their opinions on the few things on that list that the was most personal, emotional, distressing, or poignant to them. (Oh, for you commenters: What?! You didn’t know you were part of my social experiments…woops, sorry! Thanks for playing!)

Now that it’s been about 48 hours, I’m ready to close the polls and count the votes…

In the end, thirteen people took the plunge and commented. The results are rather shocking and unexpected, at least to me. Out of the twenty five items that I’ve listed, only five items received more than a single comment. In 3rd place, with three comments, was item #10, which I thought would be the clear favorite coming in. In 2nd place, with four comments, was #14, which I’ll admit is kind of random and interesting, but the winner, with a whopping NINE comments, was item #20. Number 20? You mean to tell me, that out of a list of 25 running facts about me, some inspiring, some foolish, and some downright quirky, it is the absence of a 5K from my running resume’ that concerns all of you? Wow. That really wasn’t what I was expecting.

But, since I am a runner of the people, and must be accountable to all my readers, I’ve amended my list of upcoming races to include a 5K. If you take a look at the bottom right corner of the blog, you can see the list of races I’ve signed up for right up until the Boston Marathon. I’ll be running a variety of distances in order to explore different parts of my game. There’s a 10 miler, a 15K, a 10K, and yes, even a 5K for me to test the limits of my speed and the puke threshold. After all, that IS what you all want to see, isn’t it? (As an aside, I’m holding out hope that another half-marathon will just pop up locally in March so I can test out my marathon pacing strategy…if anyone knows anything, please let me know.)

Finally, for anyone who feels jealous and wants to challenge their own puke threshold in a 5K this weekend, there’s this going on…

Go sign up over at JogAmericaBlog! It’s virtual, it’s fun, it’s free, and it’s for a great cause. What more could you ask for? I’ll be doing mine as part of my long run tomorrow. My schedule is mocking me. It says 18 miles at a pace I don’t recognize. My legs might disagree since it bailed on me last time. We’ll see what happens.

In any case, have a great weekend, everyone. (And remember to run your 5K!)