Why I Started Blogging – August Blogging Challenge – Aug. 21st

Why did I start blogging?  Well, everyone else was doing it.  And yeah mom, I jumped off a cliff once because everyone else was doing that too.  It was kind of fun 🙂  Well if everyone else can do it, why not me right?  Ok, so that’s not the real answer. Here it goes.

 This is actually my second blog.  The first one started when I was training for my first marathon. I wanted to share my runs with anyone who was unlucky enough to get caught up in conversation with me and brag about all my 15-20 mile runs. Several Facebook running statuses later,  I was informed via an article shared by a “friend” that this is a great way to lose friends fast in the Facebook world.  So I started a blog for my 4 or so friends that actually cared I was training for a marathon. Luckily my first marathon attempt was slightly more successful than my first venture into the blogging world.  Turns out that marathon training isn’t exactly all that exciting.  So ended up my blogging career. 

Or so I thought. 

Last December, I started this blog.  Originally, it was going to be a place for me to post my race recaps running stories for my running friends (I have more than 4 now!!!) without annoying the non-runners on my friend list.  Right around this time, a few of my friends were boycotting a certain free workout site and wanted alternative workouts that they could do at home.  I agreed to come up with a few to post, thinking it would just be a handful of friends watching me sweat.  I started posting some healthy recipes.  Turns out people like to eat. 

The blog almost followed the similar fate of my previous endeavor.  My mind was elsewhere in the late winter/spring.  I was navigating through a divorce.  Running and blogging took a backseat to trying to figure out how to survive as a single working mom.  I laid down the challenge to reclaim my identity.  I started living for me.  One of my friends had forwarded me an email from the RRCA with some upcoming coaching certification dates.  None of the venues were nearby, so I added myself to the mailing list.  Not long after, I received another email.  They were going to be offering a class in KC at the beginning of June.  I was going to be a running coach!! All of a sudden, my motivation to move foward was back.  I’d been missing personal training since I hung up the stop watch 3 years ago.  On a whim, I submitted my application to the YMCA.  I got a few calls from area YMCAs looking for personal trainers.  I interviewed with one near my house.  When I walked in to the interview, I knew I wanted that job. They wanted someone to head up a running program (I can do that!), to try to develop off-season training programs with the local high school (again, I can do that too!), and work with the post physical therapy folks that were taking advantage of the free month membership they got after graduating from the PT clinic housed in the same building (yay! I can use my athletic training background as well!).  It’s like they wrote the job just for me.  After being hired on the spot, I was on cloud 9. 

Slowly, the blogging bug started to bite again.  While I was in KC, I met a fellow running blogger.  On one of our morning group runs, we started talking blogs.  Turns out that she and a few others from the class had read my blog.  And they’d liked it!  Since then, I’ve made an effort to become more active in the blogging community.  I’ve made some new fitness blogging “friends.”  When I saw this challenge from the Fitness Cheerleader, I jumped right on board hoping it would give me the motivation to keep Dirty Girl Running from suffering the same fate as my first blogging adventure.