Social Networking For Runners

I get it from my dad.  That man can tell you every 400 meter split I ran while racing in high school, as well as every mile split he's run himself over the past fourteen years.  I've become a stats nerd when it comes to running and I love to track stuff like that.

A few years ago I saw one of my friends tracking her runs (and posting them to Facebook) through a site called DailyMile.  I tried it myself and it was love at first click!

Once you sign up for your free DailyMile account there's three key pages you'll want to click through:

Home

This is your hub for everything!  It's where you upload your run, fitness, swimming, elliptical or cross training activity.  You give it a title then enter the distance, your final time (it calculates your average pace per mile for you), click how you felt on it's adorable scale of smiley faces and enter a brief description of how it went (if you want.)  In some of the deeper, hidden fields you can enter the weather conditions, your heart rate and my personal favorite, gear.  I enter my shoes in that field and let DailyMile track how many miles I have on them so I know when it's time for a new pair.

The coolest, nerdy stats part of the home page is the sync button.  When I started running endurance events like half marathons and marathons, I bought myself a Garmin 310XT GPS to wear.  It tracks my pace, distance, splits and draws a map while I run, all from my wrist!  DailyMile is able to sync the data from my GPS into its home page (I don't have to enter some of the fields manually) and fill it in for me/add a map to my workout.

The homepage also has a "news feed" of sorts.  You're able to become friends with other runners through DailyMile and see their activities when you log-in.  It is just like Facebook in the sense that you can comment and like posts, but it also lets you give the athlete motivation like "good job," "great performance," and "feel better."  You also have the option to click the city you live in to see other people running in your area.

Hopefully you meet some new friends that way. I totally did! Christie and Wayne Ebenroth being two of them.  They run the race company Final Kick Events here in the Treasure Valley.  Not only did DailyMile give me the opportunity to watch Christie's training to a Boston Marathon qualifying time and Wayne's 5K a Day Challenge, it also helped me learn about some of their races like the Lake Lowell Marathon that I did in 2012.  They've also been kind enough to let me MC their Idaho Wine Run at St. Chapelle.  DailyMile is a great way to meet training partners and get ideas for races/routes!

Profile

This is your place to upload a photo and tell everyone what your goals are.  It also shows a bar graph of your weekly mileage, maps of where you ran (if you put in that data) and a feed of your runs that you've posted.  Your friends can comment and attach motivation on this page too.

Training

This is the stats nerd paradise! It shows you total mileage by week, month or year in a bar graph as well as break down your total time spent working out, pounds burned, the number of workouts you've done, how many times you've run around the world, how many TVs you've powered, how much gas you've saved, and how many DONUTS you've burned off!

It's also got a tab to see your runs in a spreadsheet or to checkout the leader board.  Yes, DailyMile puts you in a friendly competition with your friends to see who logs the most miles over a week.  I'm friends with a bunch of Ultra Marathoners so I've gotten used to losing every week!

Whether you're training for a 5K like Race for the Cure or something crazy like the Race to Robie Creek, DailyMile is worth trying out.  If you find yourself loving it as much as I do make sure you add me as a friend. Happy training!