Let's talk about something that's not NYCM.

OMG WHY DIDN'T NYCM TAKE PLACE EVEN THOUGH I TRAINED SO HARD??

WHY IS THE CITY SO SELFISH???

DIDN'T WE NEED IT FOR RESILIENCE???

Don't care. I've stated my non-opinion, and I didn't have a horse in this race (by which I mean that I'm the horse and NYCM was the race and I wasn't running regardless).

Now, what I do want to talk about it is this: the intersection of running, young women, and social media. Specifically, why are running/fitness/food/weight loss blogs written by young women so popular?

My former cyberfriend until she had a baby Marie tweeted something last week that caught my eye:

Following up on it, I discovered that the irritation that provoked her tweet was a twitter list that RW had put together of the runners that you must follow on twitter. Specifically, they are the "Running Twitterati." (I can't even type that made up, fake word without making a scrunched up, grossed out face.) It first appeared in the print edition with the subtitle of "Elite athletes, science nerds, funny runners, and others to follow."

Here's the list. Yes, there are some runners whose names you recognize (I'm not going to argue with Ryan Hall, Meb, Nick Symmonds, or Lolo Jones). And, of course, there are some gimmes: Bart Yasso, Hal Higdon [ed: I love you, Cousin Hal*, but I just unfollowed you as you are not interesting on twitter], and RW themselves.

But then... Then the list breaks down into a hodge-podge of "healthy living bloggers," newbie runners, and twitter self-promoters. I'm not calling any of these people out individually, but if you followed this list, you'd be under the impression that twitter runners had barely a basic understanding of the sport of running and were fascinated by taking pictures of their oatmeal each day. What could have been an excellent resource for valuable - yet casual - running information instead reads like the dream twitter list of a 14 year old blogger fangirl.

It's not a coincidence that the RW list is young, affluent, and white (and heavily skewed female). That's the demographic of running, at least as RW markets it. Because guess what? We like to spend money. Here's a novel idea: what if all of my female runner friends, as a block, vowed to stop caring about Lululemon, Oiselle, or Nuun and instead looked for the best product instead of the sassiest marketing. We won't fight for the right to join a company's relay team or be on their advertising team. Instead of giving companies free advertising, we can spend our money on products that help our running - trendy or not.

Excuse me now while I go read some LRC - at least they'd never use the term "twitterati." (I'm gagging again.) But not to leave you on a bad note, how about this: here's a heartening story that has nothing whatsoever to do with overprivileged runners.

*True story: Hal Higdon's wife is my paternal grandfather's first cousin.