As some of you already know, I love running. I may be a slow runner but I’m quick to see the value of social media for my chosen sport.
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Finding community
When I first joined Twitter I had a hard time finding other runners. That got me thinking: wouldn’t it be great if we could find each other more easily and share content that inspires and motivates? So I created Runner’s High twitter community and accompanying link blog [note: link log disabled until Tumbler creates better granularity for RSS feeds] to provide news, community and encouragement to fellow running geeks. For now, I simply aggregate different running feeds with original material of my own. But I have solicited runnerhigh followers to submit content via a 140 character tweet to @runnershigh.
Citizen sports broadcasting
Today, I tuned into WCSN.com’s wonderful online coverage of the 2008 Boston Marathon and posted a twitter commentary for runner’s high. Early in the commentary, I did the sports host thing and tried to predict the winnners based on what I observed. I also tweeted Tune’s amazing women’s victory a couple of seconds before she crossed the finish. But the most impressive Twitter running commentary came from @pbb who covered the marathon WHILE RUNNING IT! I applaud the geeky folks at WCSN who created twitter.com/WCSN
Twitter as running log
One of the most amazing benefits of social media for runners is the ability to create and share our run logs using hashtags. As a Twitter user, you simply follow @hashtags and create your very own tag using the # symbol to turn it into its own tagged page, which you can view at the hashtags site or at twemes.
Are you a runner? Do you spend a lot of time online? Need some extra motivation during the sluggish workday? Come and join us at runnershigh!
For those of you scratching your head and saying “WTF is Facebook?” watch the “Twitter in plain English” animation to find out.
Melanie,
kudos for starting these runner resources! I have been amazed at the runners I’ve been able to meet on Twitter (@steverunner who Twittered his Boston Marathon run, @davefleet, @miguelem, the list goes on and on). Nike+ has even entered the Twitter arena with their @nikeplus account, promoting races through their service.
All cool stuff.
I just found @runnershigh tonight; I’m following now and looking forward to the tweets!
John
http://www.hellasound.com
http://twitter.com/hellasound
[Reply]
Melanie - I found you through a conversation with John at Hella Sound. I’ve been using #runlog for a month or so. I actually am getting ready to post about it on my blog. I think if all runners started using that tag we’d all be able to see each other’s running logs. Many of the runners I follow regularly tweet their running information and this would be a great way to do it.
http://www.twitter.com/crossn81
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