5k Virtual Race on Fat Tuesday (CANCELLED)

(UPDATE: THE RACE HAS BEEN CANCELED DUE TO THE SITE BEING HACKED TO BITS... I'M KEEPING THE POST BECAUSE IT EXPLAINS WHAT A VIRTUAL RACE IS AND I LIKE IT... IF IT WERE ME RUNNING THE THING I'D HAVE A BACK-UP SITE AT BLOGGER OR SOMETHING UNTIL THE MAIN SITE CAME UP AGAIN RATHER THAN JUST DITCHING THE RACE ALL TOGETHER... BUT IT'S NOT ME AND I CAN UNDERSTAND WHY HE WOULDN'T... DOESN'T WANT PPL HAVING TOO MANY PLACES TO LOOK TO FIND THINGS. I UNDERSTAND ABOUT BRAND DILUTION... BUT I WANTED TO RACE DANG IT -- STUPID HACKERS, C'MON... GO BUG SOMEONE ELSE.)

I ran my first Virtual 5k race on January 1st. It was hosted by 5k101. The 5k101 site is down as I write this but will hopefully be back up at some point. Evidently they're under a hack-attack. C'mon hackers... go mess with people like anti-vaccine people or holocaust deniers... leave people trying to help other people get fit alone. If you're going to tear crap up tear up crap... not the good stuff.

New Virtual 5k race coming up on Fat Tuesday though and I thought I'd share it with everybody. It's another 5k and it's on 2/16/2010. Again... I'd aim you at 5k101.com to register and turn in your times but the site is not working at the moment. Hopefully soon.

So, what's a virtual race? Do you run it on the computer? Do you try and move your mouse 5km during a day surfing facebook and youtube for the next tosh.0 big hit? No... it's a race where we run it where ever we are. We don't all get together on an actual starting line at the same place geographically. We don't all run the same path and we don't all cross the same finish line. But here's the thing... 5k is 5k no matter where we are. So the idea is we all run our 5k either on a track or a 5k path we've measured, or on a treadmill. We run it around the same time and we then record our times and turn them in. Is it an official race with racing bibs? Not really... but many runners are running against ourselves for time so that's OK. We will still see where we fall in the race the people at 5k101.com break it down by gender and age and show the times and it looks like a real race where we all jostled each other for a place near the front but not TOO near the front.

If you want to join us then run/walk/jog/skip 5k on Fat Tuesday with us. Check out 5k101 for details and information. If you're a twitter person you can follow 5k101 at twitter.com/runningmate1.