2013 Blogathon

Last year in May I participated in my first Blogathon.  For a month I blogged everyday and thoroughly enjoyed the experience.  This year I thought I wouldn't be able to participate because of my long vacation in May and then I found out the Blogathon is in June.

When I registered I needed to say my goal for the 2013 Blogathon.  Duh, to blog everyday, right?  But it is more than that.  My unrealistic goal is to be happy, to blog and figure out my life.  My realistic goal is to get out of non-blogging funk, if only for one month and blog about my Peru trip.  I enjoy writing and blogging but lately adding one more thing to my list is overwhelming.  It's not like I'm a busy bee flirting from one activity to another, it's stagnation because I don't know where to start, what to do, how to start, how to finish so I do nothing. It's a funk.  My second goal is to find a different reader since Google Reader is going away and I haven't made a switch yet.  If you're using a reader, what are you using?

If you're interested in challenging yourself to blog every day, follow this link and sign up.  It's free and there is a great group of people to meet.

Happy Writing

2012 Top Blog Posts

I love looking at the statistics to see what's popular, what people are searching on and where people are from.  Here are my top visited posts of 2012 in case you missed them.

Top 5

Ragnar Relay Tips

Why I like my Garmin 305 better than Garmin 610

Running movies and documentaries

Zombie attack while out on my long run and then the video I found a week after my zombie post is here

Running safety gadgets and clothing


My Favorite
The zombie video is definitely one of my favorite posts and here are a couple others.

Tim Burton Inspired cake zoetrope

Favorite cheering sign - worst parade ever

Discussion with the bomb squad

Some injuries take longer to heal

Where the magic happens

Top of All Time
4 years ago on 12/28/2008 I did my very first post and I've had my ebbs and flows with writing and running and it's been a great journey. The top 5 posts of all time are

Ham on a string

Got Poop

Road ID- Coupon code for your order

Ragnar Packing List

National Donut Day- June 3

"If I Started Blogging Today, I Would..."

The theme for today with the Blogathon is " If I started blogging today, I Would....".  What would I do different?


Like most bloggers, I started "just because". My virtual friend Lesley had a blog and I discovered many people out there sharing my favorite topic of running.  My boyfriend told me I should start up a blog and call it Lazy Bones Running. My friend was using Blogger and since it was free, that's what I did. 3.5 years and 514 posts later, I'll share what I would have done different.

Blogger vs Wordpress
I'm all about "FREE" and knowing Blogger was free I didn't look further.  I didn't know Wordpress.org was also free.  Wordpress has better tools and has the option of converting over to a .com site. I often consider switching over to Wordpress and moving off Blogger but am not willing to commit the time.   If I started blogging today, I would start with Wordpress from the beginning.


Labels or Tags
A couple weeks ago I posted about cleaning up my labels or tags in Blogger. When I started I used a lot of labels and as a result I had hundreds of little labels.  Think of a closet where you have shelves and compartments and group like things together but you've then tossed anything and everything onto one shelf. All you see when you walk into the closet is the messy shelf. Lots of little things that make no sense and only creates confusion so you turn around and walk out.  Recently I saw a blog where there were 20 different categories, all lined up neatly. I was thrilled to stay on his blog following the links. I realized that less is more and revamped my labels on my blog.  If I started blogging today, I would list the categories I wanted and have my blog posts use only those labels.


Pictures
My posts have been lacking pictures because I've run out of space on Blogger. At the beginning I didn't reduce my file size and about a year ago used up my free space on Blogger. I have tried deleting pictures from Web Picasa but have to be careful not to delete pictures related to my blog. I know need to either buy more space or replace pictures on my blog with smaller file sized pictures or delete the pictures all together.  If I started blogging today, I would always reduce my file sizes.


Blog Purpose
I quickly learned the pleasure I received when having posts or gaining another follower.  I'd look at follower counts and place "value" on someone who had more or less than me.  Ultimately this reduced my pleasure in having a blog and I reduced the number of posts and consistency. My followers, fickle as they are, didn't stop by and "visit" and my "value" dropped.  Reduced "value" decreased my blogging mojo. You can see the circular pattern which isn't healthy and has NOTHING to do with my "value". I've thought about what is my purpose of my blog.  I do want to help people with their running. Help them learn from my success or failure but there are many blogs out there doing the same thing and many people are more qualified than I am.  So I realized, I need to have my blog "just because" I enjoy running and enjoy writing. If I started blogging today, I would not worry about followers and just write what I love, which is running and use the blog as a censored personal journal.


It takes work
Even without a blog where there is a daily post, a theme (today is 3 things Thursday) or sponsors, blogging takes a commitment.   There needs to be time to sit down and write a post.  My favorite posts are those where I've done some research but they take more time.  If I started blogging today, I would realize that it'll take time and there will be occasions that I don't want to write but knowing I'm also using the blog as a journal of my running and hikes and my life, that I need to sit down, take some time and just write.

Cleaning up Labels in Blogspot

Signing up for the blogathon made me think about my blog format. I realized my blog labels were all over the place and decided to streamline them. Cleaning up almost 500 blog posts with blogger is no easy feat.  The programmers and designers of blogger must not actually use the feature to change labels because the pull down menu's, and lack of clearing the checked boxes makes this very cumbersome.

After inadvertently applying labels to the wrong blogs or removing labels from the correct blogs, I learned to select all labels, check the box to select all posts, then remove the check mark and finally refresh the screen.  Not doing those steps leads to higher probability of making errors.  When I first started my blog, I loved the label cloud and how the more occurences make the font size bigger. Now I switched to a single column format for my labels.

I recommend for any new blogger to write down the labels, the main categories, they want to use. Limiting the labels will streamline the number of categories listed on your side bar making it easier for the audience to maneuver through the blog. More isn't necessarily better.

Join me for the 2012 WordCount Blogathon!

I've lost my blogging mojo and when I saw my friend Jackie signed up for WordCount Blogathon challenge to post everyday I thought that may be what I need.  Committing to do something on a consistent basis could mean failure and I hate failure and the guilt I put on myself. Even if I have to write something simple like I was lazy and didn't run or blog, that would meet the requirement, right?

I'm hoping with the blogathon I find my blogging mojo again. I enjoy writing and during a run I think of lots of post topics. The problem is sitting down and putting those ideas down on the screen. It takes time to write and adding another thing on top of the already existing paperwork, grocery shopping, laundry and other chores gets to be challenging. 

So here's to 31 days of blogging.  Won't you join me?

Happy Blogging!

New Blogger Format. Yay or Nay?

Those of you using Blogger, what are your thoughts on the new format?  I like how it looks but have trouble figuring out some basics like creating a new post.  It took me a couple tries before I found the NEW button to get to a posting page.  I don't always handle change quickly and it takes me a bit to figure out changed programs.

One thing I wish Blogger had was a format painter.  In Microsoft Word and Excel you can highlight a word, click format painter which copys the format (color, font, style) of the word and then copy it to another section.  Blogger doesn't handle formatting well when copy/pasting and having a format painter would be awesome.

I'm also running out of picture space on web picasa which is making me quite stingy with my picture management.  I didn't realize that Blogger saves all the pictures on the web and that uses up my free space.  I'm almost out of space and can buy more space (which takes the FREE out of having a blog), switch to Word Press (which I've been considering anyways but will eventually have the same issue) or even deleting pictures (which I really don't want to do).  Blogger also doesn't handle moving pictures well.  I don't know how many times I try and add a picture and it places it somewhere else and I have to fight with it to move it.

I really like the stats feature of Blogger.  Seeing what posts are popular is interesting to me and what countries people arrive from makes me feel like maybe I do have something to say that others find interesting.  

From an older post (don't want to do a new pic and take up valuable space)

What do you like most about Blogger?  What do you like least?  What tips and tricks do you have for Blogger?

Happy Running...or maybe I should say happy blogging

Blogger Statisics

I'm not sure when Blogger added it, but they added a tab to my dashboard called Stats.

It has some really cool stuff.  For example, the top 5 pages of my blog hit for all time are:

Got Poop? 

Ragnar Relay Safety

Free Excuse Book and my Bruised Foot

RAK #1

Poem - Choosing the Perfect Race Outfit 

You can also select for the day, week or month too.

You can see more detail on the posts tab and see that in just the last week 16 people with nothing better to do looked at my Got Poop post. (BTW, I have in draft stage Got Poop II.  Now that I know there is a demand for poop, I'll have to finish it up).  It's interesting to see what people search for.

Traffic Sources show where people are coming from for just that week.  Thanks Racing with Babes, Sneakersister and RunTallWalkTall.  And know I've even linked back to them.    The infomation on where people are linking from for All time is interesting (again thanks Racing with Babes and RunTallWalkTall.)

And the coolest information is where the audience is. Check this out!

Someone from Poland, Russia and Slovenia has bounced over to my little blog.  Amazing.  And this is just for the month. The All time shows the top 10 hits so I can't see all the places people are from. 

And if you're geeky, you can see what browser people use and what device they are using to check out your blog. 

So check out your tabs.  What did you find of interest on your stats tab?