Some of the wonderful things rattling around in this full brain 'o mine. UPDATED EVERY TUESDAY AND THURSDAY (or at least twice a week)

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Athlinks...Myspace for Runners...

I’m back home in MI visiting family, and as usually happens when my Dad and I get together, we start surfing the net. I show him some things he hasn’t seen, and he shows me some pictures he’s gotten put up here and there…

This time I decided to search his name though, just to see what would come up on the Google Search…

Strangely enough, in one of the more serendipitous moments of his life…we stumbled upon Athlinks. You see, my Dad years ago got a fever…and the only prescription…was physical activity. He got into running competitive road races through the local running club. At one point in time, we were running races together all over the state of MI. I lost my drive for it…now preferring running just to run, or focusing on my chi running. He though, found a certain kinship in the people who do it. He runs at least 1 race a weekend, sometimes doing upwards of 3 races ranging anywhere from 2 miles – to Half marathons. Lately, he mentioned that people had been coming up to him, knowing where he had ran the last couple of weeks, and what his times were. He couldn’t figure out how they knew…until now:

Athlinks!

Basically, from what I can tell, Athlinks is like Myspace, except for runners. It’s free to join. In fact, if you have run a timed competitive race in the last 10+ years, you might already be on there. I searched my name, and it came up with the 6 official races I’ve done since ’99. Pretty cool eh?

It gets cooler though, once you sign up, you can add people as your friends. You can create journal entries and add photos for each race you do. You can even add YouTube videos of anything dealing with the races you run! It keeps track of your rivals, a rival being anyone you’ve competed against at least 3 times. Case in point, my Dad had about 300+ rivals. It even lets you compare your mile times with your rivals, so you can see where exactly you need to pick it up. If there’s a race missing, you can add it to your results. It’s a nice easy place to keep track of all your times. It lets you search for upcoming events to run in. Overall, I’d say it’s a very very useful site for runners. Check it out…more importantly, if you know someone who’s been caught up in the wave of racing…tell them about it, and get it out there! This is something more people need to belong to and utilize!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the comments. We appreciate it. Please let me know if I can answer any questions.

Andrew

http://www.athlinks.com/racer.aspx