If you've been reading this blog for a while, you've seen it go through many iterations: New designs, different writing styles, different posting cadence, super oversharing to zero oversharing and everything in between.

The world of blogging has changed a lot since I first started back in 2006, and as my life has gone from college student, to navigating my first job in my early 20s, to going back to school for my MBA, to hitting my career stride in my early 30s, what I've used this space for has changed so much.


Me in 2006 and me in 2017. Digital photo quality also improved in the last 11 years.

The Early Days

When I first launched this blog back in 2006 (how has it been that long), this space was basically my virtual training journal. I wrote about every run I did in excruciating detail while training for my first marathon.


Baltimore Marathon finish line 2006

I analyzed the weather and the distances. I questioned my really slow pace (at the time I was running around 12-minute miles). I wrote about when my motivation waxed and waned. It was all running all the time with maybe the random post thrown in about how college or my internship was impacting my training.

And then I ran that first marathon and basically stopped blogging for three or four months because I didn't know what to write about anymore. This space had served its purpose.

The Blogging "Boom"

Blogging -- especially health and fitness blogging -- wasn't "the thing" back then that it would become sometime around 2009-2010.

There was certainly a community of people back on those old blogger blogs doing the same thing I was -- training for races and tracking their progress -- and we built a little virtual running support community. Many of those people stopped blogging or moved their adventures over to other platforms. I sometimes miss that little community (Wes, Jess, CJ, Marcy, Lisa, you all know what I'm talking about). It was easier to sit down and write about the trials and tribulations of training when you had your people virtually cheering you on.

When health and fitness blogging blew up a few years later, the landscape changed and my writing style changed too. I was trying to crank out a post every day, which led to some really crappy posts. Food pictures became super popular so I tried that too, and quickly learned that was not a thing I was any good at or cared about enough to become good at.

As confusing as it was to figure out what to write about, it wasn't all bad though. Blogging blowing up this way earned me some fun blog friends that became IRL friends.


Megan and I when we met in-person in 2011.


Then again at her wedding this past June.

Life was busy and full. I was racing a ton and didn't have a bunch of injuries so I had plenty of things to write about in this space.

The 2011 Slump

Then there was the backlash against lifestyle blogging and the emergence of the school of thought that bloggers should only churn out useful content (similar to what the health and fitness magazines were writing) because that would make your content show up in Google, which would drive pageviews and earn you more money (if you were running ads or had corporate partnerships).

Around the same time, in the summer of 2011, I had the natural inclination to pull back on some of the random life updates and personal content anyway. I had gone through a traumatic breakup, and I had no desire to share the details of that publicly -- even though up until that point, I'd shared a lot of my life pretty publicly.

It was a stark pivot, and I knew readers could tell something was up, but I had no interest in figuring out how to share any of that story in this space.

So I just pulled back and refocused my writing on health and fitness stuff.

It was a weird, tricky place to be, and it left me super confused about what exactly I should be writing about here.

Grad School, Injuries and the Future

Somewhere after that slump in 2011, I rebounded and found a somewhat normal writing groove again. But when I went back to grad school in 2014, my free time tanked. Trying to balance work, classes and homework didn't leave me a lot of extra time to write. I was barely publishing a post once a month.


Flashcards were my life.

When grad school ended, I seemed to battle an on-going series of injuries. Since I had pretty much eliminated my random life updates, I didn't have a lot to write about. It's hard to write a running/fitness blog when you can't actually workout.

At some point, I introduced my book reviews, which seem to be super popular, even though they have nothing to do with the main subject matter of this blog. I've re-introduced a random life update post here and there (most recently talking about some holiday stuff), and I really enjoy blogging about my travels when I go fun places.

One of my goals in 2018 is to better figure out what to do with this space. It's evolved and changed so much over the years. I want to write more and hopefully find a good balance of things worth sharing. There are some new topics I'm interested in writing about and maybe some former features I want to bring back.

I'm sure it will take me some time to settle into a new groove with this space. I like the focus that running and fitness bring to my writing, but I also like having the flexibility to write about other things.

If you have thoughts on what you'd liked to see me blog about feel free to leave a comment below or drop me a line (jess@jessruns.com).

Good morning friends!

I'm currently on my way to the Big Apple for a blogger event at Fitness Magazine! I'm super excited to catch up with some of my favorite bloggers and spend a day hanging out with some of the magazine's editors.

Traveling always stresses me out, and I never sleep well the night before, so I had absolutely no problem waking up when my alarm went off at 3:30 a.m. In fact, I was actually wide awake at 2 a.m. (This means I will crash hard on the way back to DC tonight!)


I've decided that 3:30 in the morning is far too early to wake up unless I'm headed to a race, but I managed to make my way down to Union Station in order to catch my 4:48 a.m. train.

I had an especially chatty cab driver this morning who told me I should call him sometime when I was getting out of the cab. That was only mildly awkward.

Other than that, my travel plans went off without a hitch this morning.

Have I mentioned before that I am obsessed with the train and think it's by far the best way to travel?

• Amtrak trains have a quiet car where people can't talk. This is brilliant. No screaming babies. No obnoxious people on cell phones. Just peace and quiet. In fact that train conductor totally laid the smack down on some guy who was talking on his phone in the car this morning. It was fantastic.
• Free wi-fi, which is currently bringing you this blog post. More airlines need to get on this!
• I don't have to sit in traffic on 95. Rush hour is a B in DC, in Philly and in NYC, all cities I'd have to contend with if I were on the road. Oh and I don't have to pay tunnel tolls when I take the train. Sure, the bus might be a little bit cheaper (and most have free wi-fi these days too) but the train is a million times faster, which makes NYC day trips possible.
• You can roll up to the train gate about five minutes before the train leaves and not have to deal with massive security lines.

On that note, I'm going to unplug, grab a quick nap, and catch you from NYC! If you want to follow along with the day events live, follow me on Twitter (@jessmilcetich). I'll be tweeting updates all day!

Being sick is no fun. Especially when you're not really, really, sick, but you're just sick enough to be unable to function like a normal person and about the only thing you can do is sit in bed and watch TV, while repeatedly blowing your nose and sucking on cough drops.

That's been the story of my life the last several days and it's perfectly miserable. I'm starting to go a little stir crazy.

On account of this crappy sickness, I don't really have any fun workouts to share with you, so I thought I would shift gears a little bit today and tell you the story of why I started blogging.

I'm taking part in the Bliss Connect #6WeeksofBliss challenge so over the next several weeks, I'll be sharing several fun stories like this.

Why I Started Blogging:

It's been nearly six years since I was sitting in my sophomore year dorm room at the University of Maryland starring at the confirmation letter on my computer screen.

"Congratulations Jessica. You are registered for the 2006 Baltimore Marathon."

Emily, my roommate at the time (and still best friend to this day) was sitting at her desk practically giddy with excitement, singing a little song about how I was going to run my first marathon.


I, however, was sitting at my own desk feeling a little bit overwhelmed.

I didn't know the first thing about running or training for races, but I sure as heck knew I needed something to keep me accountable in my training.

I Googled "blogs", Blogger.com came up as the first search result, and I typed in some ridiculousness and pushed publish, and this little blog was born.

The first post I ever wrote was such a rambling mess, I sometimes cringe looking back on it. My first several months of blogging, I talked about nothing but my marathon training: how my runs went, what the weather was like, just how slow I went (12 minute miles, if you're curious).

My blog existed to help me keep track of my training.

And then one day, someone left a comment -- a really nice, positive and encouraging comment.


And when I posted questions I had about running or training, people started answering. It was like I suddenly had a life-line to a small group of people who had done this marathon training thing before and wanted to help me.

My little community of readers encouraged me when I had bad runs, offered support when I questioned whether I could actually run a marathon and virtually cheered me on when I crossed the finish line in Baltimore.

I say it time and time again, but I have learned so much from the collective wisdom of the running and blogging communities. That's what keeps me coming back to blogging. Sure, I like a place to ramble about my workouts to keep me accountable, but more importantly, I love this community so much.

I love the advice and the support, and I love reading your blogs to learn more and be challenged to try new things (like my upcoming tri, that was totally peer pressure from you guys!) And I have loved the opportunity to meet many of you in person and I hope to meet many more of you in the future!

And on the note that I'm starting to get a smidge sappy and sentimental, so I'm going to wrap this post up.

But tell me, why do you blog? Or why do you read blogs? How did you get started and what keeps bringing you back?

That's one of the biggest things I learned when I was in Orlando this week for work.

Sure I may have been hundreds of miles from home, but I knew I still had friends in Orlando and I was lucky enough to meet up with several of them Friday for a delicious dinner at Seasons 52.

Katy, my Fitbloggin' partner in crime, organized a mini-blogger meet-up dinner for while I was in town and I had the pleasure of meeting Michelle, Ben and Kelly and Anthony.

The best part about meeting bloggers in person is that you just sort of pick up the conversation where the blogs leave off. It was easy to talk to Kelly about her wedding planning and pick Ben's brain for weight lifting tips. It's like you kind of already know what's going on in each others' lives.

I'm fairly confident I could travel just about anywhere in the country and find at least one blog friend to meet for dinner or lunch. I love how small blogging makes the world.