Running Bra Review or Sex Parity in the Blogosphere

No.  This is not a running bra review.  I don't wear them unless you count Halloween last year.  My guess is that this blog title will drive more clicks than a men's running watch post would.  No doubt a blog post that will drive some debate or drive readers away due to some sort of sexist or feminist reverse discrimination response, but I have a question.  Where are the male bloggers in the running world?  I know a good number of the men who run and write about and there are some good ones;

The feminine side of SBM: "I was beat up by a Ballerina"

Run Luau Run:  I met Matt (Luau) at a DailyMile Boston Marathon meet-up a few years ago at Boston.  Great guy, great blog, and passionate about running and driving awareness around Autism.

Run Bulldog Run:  I met Steve and his wife Ally at the same meet-up.  Steve is wicked fast and one of the few that places in races and can say that he ran the Leadville 100.

Joe Runs for Dom: Blog created by Joe for his buddy Dom who was fighting and succumbed to Cancer.  Another cool fast dude.

Pavement Runner: Probably the most widely followed male blogger who has graced the pages of Runner's World.

The Beer Runner: Two of my favorite things; beer and running.  #nuffsaid

For every Steve and Matt, there are dozens of women bloggers.  For starters, I should set the record straight.  I will not make a career of running, nor will the $2 a month from my blog cover my mortgage.  I'm okay with this.  I simply love running and had a re-birth as a writer in 2007 when I created "Seeking Boston Marathon."  I love to combine writing and sometimes illustrating my stories as it makes me feel better about "selling my soul to the devil" my freshman year in college when the right brain won out over the left brain and I switched from the art school to the business school.  My sometimes "off color" writing has perhaps kept my audience down and the sponsors away (see Fifty Shades of Marathon Grey.)

A "Man" blog post

In high school I was not a runner, but I was the co-editor of my high school news magazine.  Surprise, surprise...I wrote a lot of satire pieces.  I'm my biggest fan as I recall reading one of my papers in grade school and nearly (actually) wet my own pants.  #nerd

My wife is an avid blog reader which probably fueled some early delusion that my blog would "take off" as she would tell me stories of women who quit their day jobs to work their blogs full-time taking pictures of food, furniture, kids, or the milk can they spray-painted and sold on Etsy.  My blog fantasy continued as I thought readership would skyrocket and I'd make it to Runner's World magazine some day and Kara Goucher would not only respond to my Facebook and Twitter "follow" requests but occasionally respond with an "LOL" to one of my tweets or posts.  Then I woke up.

I'm beginning to sound like a bitter writer, but I'm not. Blogging and running gives me balance in life as I juggle a career, heavy travel, my amateur karaoke singing status, and trying to be a good dad and husband.  Having said that, it baffles me when I see someone who started a Facebook Fan page six months ago with "I'm cute, I wear a ponytail, I'm training for my first marathon, and I have 6,000 followers."  I'm not, I don't, I've run ten and I have 500 followers.

If I haven't proven a point;

There's a #blogher conference, but no sign of a #bloghim conference.

I was thrilled to break the "glass floor" and be named to WomenRaces.com's Top 100 Motivating Endurance Facebook pages, but where is MensRaces.com? #urlnotfound

MensRaces.com can't be found on the internet

I saw a runner friend (woman) who liked "Runner Girl" on Facebook as I sat down to write this.  48,355 likes.  Granted, this is a whole 'nother level in the social running world, but to prove a point, I typed in;

runnerboy.com


I know, it doesn't exactly sound right and who knows what would pop up.  My parental or employer filter may have blocked the results, but it came back fairly innocuous.  Nothing to do with running, they're peddling IT services.

Runnerboy.com will help you fix your computer

Megan Garber from Atlantic.com wrote an article on the topic last year called the Digital (Gender Divide) and states that women are simply "more likely than men to have a blog and a Facebook profile."  I'd take it a step further and conclude that men are less likely to read blogs and wormen are more likely to read women blogs.  Further proof that most of my 125,000 page views comes from my parents.

I'm not sure what my point is other than it confuses me.  I'm thankful that I can run and write about it.  I appreciate the occasional perk of being a blogger by interviewing Josh Cox at last year's Boston Marathon, being an Instagram Ambassador for the Columbus Marathon, and the treasure trove of The North Face running gear they sent me to test drive.  What you won't find here are milk cans on Etsy.