There are plenty of running websites and personal fitness blogs out there, so what makes this one unique? Ultimately, you the reader will have to decide how special and unique our blog is and whether it’s worth your time to read it. You can read about us and why we started this blog, but it’s up to you to decide if you like it (we hope you do). Here’s some of the ways we’ve tried to make this blog unique.
- We write our own content. All of the posts are original, hand-written by Mary Catherine and Joe Domaleski. We don’t repackage generic content like many other national fitness websites. It’s really us writing these posts and hopefully that shows in our informal style. The picture above shows our dog Thor at the keyboard. Sometimes he helps write the content, too.
- We use our own photos. All of the photos are originals – mostly taken by us on our iPhones, but some taken by friends. Sometimes we feature official race photos. In cases where we’ve done that, we purchase the rights to those photos and give credit to the photographer. We don’t steal photos from other websites, nor do we use generic stock photos on this website. Don’t you get tired of seeing those bland stock “fitness model” pictures on websites? We do. On some of our older pictures where we don’t have a digital original, we simply take a picture of the picture and use that. We’re not professional photographers, so hopefully that adds to the charm of our amateur pictures.
- We don’t feature advertising on this website. We’re maintaining this website as a vehicle for sharing with other people, not to make money or sell ads. Although we don’t know what the future holds in store, for now we intend to keep it ad-free.
- We don’t promote specific products or services for pay. From time-to-time we might share specific products or services we like, but that’s done just as a friend might share with you what they like. In all cases, any product or service we mention is something we’ve paid for with our own money. We are not paid by any company to feature their products nor do we write bogus reviews for pay.
- We avoid saying anything negative about a product, service, political opinion, or anything else. The old adage, “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all” applies here. We will tell you what we like, but we avoid telling you what we dislike. After you’ve read the blog awhile, I bet you can figure out our dislikes anyway.
- We aim to make all of the blog posts interesting, useful, funny, helpful, motivating, informational, and sometimes all of that at once. Sometimes we succeed and sometimes we don’t. That’s okay, we’re still learning how to be bloggers.
- We aspire to have this blog appeal to fellow married runners in which one or both partners run. Hopefully our posts not only deal with running, but also the relationship implications of running and fitness. There’s a wealth of other websites out there for runners who are mothers, training for marathons, trying to lose weight, run in all 50 states, providing detailed gear reviews, etc.
- We are not writing articles to provide professional advice. Although both Mary Catherine and Joe have had formal fitness training and hold various certifications, we are not trying to get you to hire us for professional advice. We are not doctors, physical therapists, marriage counselors, dietitians, or coaches. Our advice is shared with you as a fellow friend might share. We attempt to write content that is practical, relevant, simple, and effective based on our own experiences – your experiences will probably vary.
- We hope that if you read something you like, you’ll share it with others. Even better, share your comments! Please know we aren’t trying to win any type of online popularity contest with website hits, Facebook likes, shares, retweets, etc. Although it is gratifying to know people find our blog useful, we try not to get caught up in the numbers game. Did you know that many professional websites actually “buy” fake likes and retweets? That’s why you sometimes see a post that’s less than a minute old already have thousands of likes. It’s a money and numbers game and we’re not participating in that. Joe monitors the analytics report and this site gets good traffic so we know that at least one other person besides us is reading our website!
Disclosure – Mary Catherine is an active personal trainer, with a very small local clientele. However, this blog is not designed to generate new clients for her. If you want to contact her, she’d be happy to talk with you. Also, Joe is a professional web designer and owns a local web design company – Country Fried Creative. Even though this blog isn’t designed to generate new business for his company, you wouldn’t hurt Joe’s feelings if you contacted him about your web design needs if you have interest. That’s it! We’re not obligated to promote any agendas, links, or businesses as this is our own personal blog. Isn’t free speech a great thing?
