800 blog posts and counting: should I, should we?

I love the expression doing something, and counting! I like persistence and, to no surprise on this blog, endurance. I like to stick to it. I admit, border stubbornness at times... Hopefully not too much boringness though...

(Picture generated with Gemini 2.5 Flash)

When I started blogging in March 2007, I had no idea where that addition to my running journey, or addiction, would take me. Blogging was getting popular and shorten the delays of hearing about races in particular, compared to the monthly rhythm of UltraRunning Magazine for instance. It was also a great way to hear about tips and training techniques from some elite runners. I've fond memories of reading about the crazy mileage Anton Kupricka was putting into hilly training, in the 100-150 mile range, week after week. Anton also used Blogger and published 348 posts from 2007 to 2014 (Riding the wind), and a few beautiful stories recently on Substack. 

But we can't talk about blogging persistence without mentioning Scott Dunlap's A trail runner's blog. I counted 1,029 posts to date and that doesn't tell the full story as Scott has continued to be at the forefront of social media, jumping and embracing other platforms, including Substack too.

I'm not going to invest days in an exhaustive survey of the whole blogosphere, there are so many blogs out there, most not showing any activity for 5 or 10 years. And there are the outliers; what about Jon Teisher's Pitt Brownie blog which has been active for 20 straight years (2005-2025) and 6,945 posts (including a peak year at 941 in 2009)! That has to be a record for a personal blog, that is not counting ultra trail running news platform such as I Run Far.

Back to my Farther Faster mantra, and blog name; I had settled for an average of 1 post a week, a cadence which I held for 12 years (2007-2018) before falling off pace after my first major running injury, a fissure of my hamstring tendon. If there is one thing which I find hard about injury is not running of course. And, this blog being about my personal running journey, no running means not much to share.

In the age of social media and instant news publishing, even live webcast and running tracking at some events, there is an abundance of content. Once in a while, like that happened on the first climb at Tamalpa Headlands 50K 2 weeks ago, a runner would tell me that they enjoyed reading a race report, and that makes my day! Plus comfort me in the crazy idea of persevering, although the engagement isn't as strong as 10 or 15 years ago. Back then, Mom was my most ardent reader, leveraging her mastery of English she gained while working in London then serving as Executive Assistant to Christian Dior's leadership team. But then she got hit by one of the many forms of dementia and left us last year.

In addition to race reports, I used to travel a lot for work, around the world, and really enjoyed discovering cities on foot, then sharing tips for other visitors. These posts are typically tagged as "Running in..." the respective continent. See in the right margin. Another friend who left us since enjoyed this way to travel virtually around the world as she couldn't fly herself anymore.

At 52 posts a year, it was going to take 20 years to get to 1,000 articles. With another major injury last year (torn/fractured meniscus), I had to be off running for 7 months, and another big break for the blog. Incidentally, the pandemic had its own toll too.

Meanwhile, it's cool to see that the most used search keyword getting people to my blog isn't my name but Micah True! He left us way too soon... Blogger has changed its analytics platform along the way so I'm missing the stats of the early days. Also, not clear how many of these views are from humans or machines...

As for the country origins, I certainly posted a few articles about my runs in Singapore but is that really the reason for 3rd place?

So, what's ahead? I'd like to keep going if for only one thing: to keep running memories easily accessible and organized. For me but also to contribute to the journaling of our local ultra running community in particular. UltraSignup has ingested race results from many events pre dating this platform. Some would actually say that they stole them, a few other registration platforms having fought back and recovered their own results. But these logs only tell part of the story. What about the weather, what about course conditions and changes, what about the volunteers, what about the perks? Short of covering the whole field in my reports, I try to capture these elements at least. Not to mention adding pictures.

That's for the coverage of races. As my IT career is winding down and kept me in the Bay Area these past 2 years, I hope to visit many more countries and sharing about some cool places to run. I've visited 70 countries so far, almost 130 to go, stay tuned! And if 70 looks like a big number, my friend Chuck has passed 130. In ultra, there is always someone who has done something bigger and more extravagant, that emulation and inspiration keeps us on our toes to keep moving ahead!

I always much appreciate reading comments so, if you did read to that point, thank you for letting me know what you think, including what you'd like to see, between some innovation or the good ol' classic...

And now, cheers to many more miles together around the blogosphere then!

PS: never resisting to pinpoint the strengths and flaws of generative AI these days... Granted, I used the free Gemini 2.5 Flash LLM for these pictures, surely the pro and paid models can and would do better.

That was the last of 4 prompts and I thought that, finally, it captured the sequence correctly (mind you, I had to state the three numbers in my prompt). Yet, as a mechanical engineer, that type of rotating counter, with multiple windows, each with scrolling digits, doesn't make any sense. A proof, if needed, that there is no understanding of how things work, in an LLM, just a bunch of pixels arranged to hopefully make some sense. Yet, the rendering as a potential real picture remains quite amazing, especially in a few seconds. It would have probably taken hours if not days in some Adobe software for an artist to create something like this.

The interesting trick of this image is that this is the downloaded high resolution picture of the one I used at the top of the post, which I took straight from the screen. The difference shows a kind of movement, which is even better. Except that the simulated movement doesn't make much sense, mechanically speaking. It's also odd to have 778 before 799, isn't it? But, again, for something free and quick, amazingly good enough!

And now, the cherry on the cake, the real hallucination!