Marathon by Facebook

“A trend,” someone more clever than myself once remarked, “is any occurrence that a journalist has spotted more than once.”

With that caveat in mind, one ought to take with an enormous molecule of salt the following Time magazine column, which finds that more people are running marathons because of … Facebook. The author, noticing that some of her friends were inspired to run a marathon by their online marathoning buddies, solicits some testimonials, tosses in some tangentially related data (marathon running is up) and arrives at a conclusion: Social networking is inspiring a new generation of endurance athletes!

Well, maybe, although my experience as a first-time marathoner a couple years back was quite the opposite. In the beginning, each time my long runs reached a new plateau, I would mention it in my status updates. Early on, this attracted some positive responses. But by the time I actually ran the marathon, the responses had all but stopped — save for one friend who liked to counter every update I made about running with a cheeky comment about her love of … Twinkies.

And so — belatedly — I got the hint that just maybe the rest of the world doesn’t find the minutiae of my training regimen quite as fascinating as I do! I can’t imagine that very many FB friends were motivated by my example to go run a marathon; if they were, they failed to mention it in their status updates! (Exercise, as I’ve noted before, is one of those subjects like politics and religion that a good many people would simply rather not discuss.)

Since then, I’ve been delighted to have discovered dailymile, where fellow road nerds who actually like to hear about these things can regale each other with their tales of triumph and encourage one another during their times of woe. (By the way, if you haven’t already, please come join the Running Catholic group on dailymile — all are invited!)

Because, according to my extensive scientific research (note the anecdote above), there is a “major trend” under way, and it can be summed up in one sentence: Your Facebook friends don’t care how many miles you ran today!

And really, shouldn’t we leave that fine medium to more important subjects like farms, mafia wars, and Scrabble?