Face Time

I’m not the oldest person on Facebook, but I’d guess I’m in the top 5%. At my age, it’s nice to know you’ve made it to the top 5% in something. Anyway, I joined up because I read that I needed to take control of my “personal brand identity” and that Facebook is one of the essential tools. I think what they mean is that you need to keep a grip on what people find when they search your name. And what they don’t find. And what I didn’t want found was my running times.

After almost 15 years of running, I’m still not one of those sleek, fast people who look natural doing it. I never will be. That’s OK, but since everything’s on the web these days, my race results were right at the top of my online life. Was that bad? Probably not. Most normal people would find running in races a positive thing. But runners? No, they would look at it is and say, “He’s, SLOWWW. VERRRY slow. Look at THIS: a 1:28 15K! And, oh my God: a FIVE HOUR marathon!” Yeah, five hours. Worst five hours of my life.

For better or worse, I’ve pretty much buried the slow race results behind all the other crap I’m doing online. But I’m not sure it worked out the way I wanted. And look at it this way: five hours is a long time, but I was out there running for two-and-a-half hours longer than the winner, right? That’s gotta count for something.

2 thoughts on “Face Time

  1. The only thing that happens when I google “Sheila Conolly” is that it tells me I really wanted to google “Sheila Connolly”. My personal brand identity is in crisis.

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