How I write about my friends

Its day eight of my attempt to write thirty posts in thirty days.  Today's topic is one that I actually do think about when I am writing, "How I choose to write about others in my blog".

Like I said in an earlier post, I started this blog as a running journal.  I was not even thinking about anyone else when I started writing it.  Then one day I started to mention one of my running partners in a post.

I stopped and thought about it for a few minutes.  Do they want to be in my blog?  Do they want their name out their for the world (okay, two people that read my blog) to see?  Do they know what a blog is?

So after much thought (about two seconds) I decided that I would use nicknames as much as possible.

My coach was easy: "Coach Greg". Occasionally I call him other names, but its usually to myself while running one of his track workouts.

My running "team" name: "Say Something!" came from a Marine (Emde) who yelled it all the time at our Boot Camp workouts.  It just seemed to fit us.

My running partners' nicknames just kind of happened:

"CSR" - We have been running together for a few years and she's running the R2R2R with me in April.  How did I come up with her nickname?  Well, we run by trains and trucks all the time and I see the company logo CSX.  One day I realized that her initials were really close to that and just starting referring to her as CSR.  How creative is that?

"LA" - This one came about because there was more than one Annie in our running circle (although, I call the other Annie "Amy" now because after running a twenty miler and having all my sugar depleted from my brain that's what I called her).  LA was twenty three at the time and she is pretty small so Little Annie or "LA" seemed to fit.  She started dating a guy named Christopher a while ago and I tagged him as "OC".  Why?  Mostly because I thought OC and LA (Orange County - Los Angeles) kind of went together :)

"Ninja Stuntman" - Oh, this was a good one.  We were all running one morning and NSM tripped and fell.  But it was not the trip or the fall that landed him this nickname.  It was the way he did a ninja roll as he fell and jumped back up that made this name stick.  I even wrote a blog post about that one!

"WTF" - One of my favorite nicknames has been my wife's.  Last year when she decided she wanted to not only train for her first half marathon, but her first full marathon she said some pretty funny stuff.  You really have to read the post to get the full understanding of this one...

There are plenty of others that I talk about in my blog.  "Little P" is my son.  He is a big part of everything I do and even does a few guest blogging posts for me.

Another person I talk about is "Joe No L".  He was on our first Palmetto 200 team and when he introduced himself he said "Hi, I'm Joe No L".  I heard "Hi, I'm Joe Noel" (with a lot of emphasis on his last name).  He walked around and I heard him say it several times.  As we ran, I kept thinking about it and wondering why he made such a big deal about his last name. After a few weeks I realized what he was saying, but by that time the name had stuck "Joe No L".  Be careful what you say around me...

I really do try to keep people's privacy in mind when I write.  People who are calling in sick to run with me might not want it broadcast over the internet that they were running in the mud that day.

Some people just don't want their name all over a blog (whether people read it or not).

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