OMG Why Do Runners Always Brag On Facebook??

You've probably seen runners do it. "Just ran 4 miles in under 40 minutes woohoo!" "Just PR'ed my 5K!" "I nailed my long run, 12 miles in the rain uphill both ways."

Why must runners and other athletes put all that up in front of everybody, are they trying to show off? Are they trying to make non-runners feel bad? Are they just cocky?

You may be someone who has made such posts. (Heaven knows I never would!!!) Someone may have complained to you, or someone may have Vaguebooked about your post so they could vent without admitting that it was you that got under their skin.

So why do we do it?

It's simple, generally in face to face conversation with a person, we ask about them. On Facebook, we don't have a specific "them" in front of us. So we talk about ourselves. We talk about the things that are on our mind, that excite us, that frustrate us, that we are proud of, or that we are sick of.

Right now 3 of the first 4 posts on my newsfeed (summarized) "I'm playing music today" "I'm going to the movies" and "I'm going to LA".

So, non runners, we runners are going to post about what excites us.

Running.

We will post about our first time to run a mile without a walk break, our first 5K, our first 5K under 30 minutes, under 20 minutes, our new PR.

We will post about our love of how we feel after a good run, about how hard our speedwork was this morning, about how our long run just kicked our tails.

We will make posts that other runners will recognize and you may not. "Twenty-six two baby!!" or "Ugh, black toenails".

We will post about the race we just ran, the race we'd love to run, and the race we are about to run.

We will post about how we feel during taper week, or about how we can't wait for taper week.

We might even post about bloody nipples.

Runners, if someone complains about you "bragging on Facebook" remember that they are posting about the doughnuts they had for breakfast, the cigar they smoked last night, and about the cool car they saw on the highway.

There is nothing wrong with their posts about what is exciting to them, and there is nothing wrong with our posts about what is exciting to us.