Fit for the net

Exercise junkies are using social networking tools to cheer on and to challenge, discovers LESLIE BARKER GARCIA. -

When Libby Jones, who is four months pregnant, posted on Facebook that she was going to take a Zumba class, a comment immediately popped up: "It will get your heart rate waaaay up there, so be careful!" To which Jones, 30, replied: "Oh, I didn't know that! Thanks! I'll wear my heart-rate monitor and keep an eye on it!"

The days Blanca Gonzales doesn't log on to dailymile.com and record her runs, she hears from people who read her updates on Facebook regularly.

"Where's your workout?" they ask. "Where's your report?"

"It motivates me to go out and do it," says Gonzales, 46, who lives in Arlington, Texas. "When I don't feel like working out, I see friends online who did and I say, 'I should be able to do that'."

After earning his MBA in 2003, Tommy Johnson had time to ride his bike again. He went online to find coming races and found beginnertriathlete.com. Next thing you know, he's connecting with strangers, recording his workouts and doing seven to 10 triathlons a year. It's even led him into coaching a triathlon training club.

Exercise is something we do for ourselves. It's also often better shared. In these days of social networking, that means more than telling a friend at work about a good training run or grousing to a sister about how your tennis match was. Instead, it means doing a little perusing, a little clicking, a little sharing. Feeling competitive? Then compare your workout to someone else's, ask for advice, offer it.

You can register for any number of websites, usually at no cost, or just update your friends on Facebook or Twitter. You can use the Nike+, which goes into your shoe and, through your iPod, tracks your pace, distance, time and calories burned. Later, you share the information online.

"In some ways," Jones says, "it feels so nerdy or geeky, like a futuristic society where we're so dependent on our computers, with all these social media destroying the framework of social interactions. It's completely the other way. It's bringing you together with people you never get to see."

During her two years as president of the Dallas Running Club, Jones spent many hours and miles at White Rock Lake with fellow runners. When her term ended, travelling 45 minutes each way from her home in Allen didn't make as much sense. She began staying connected through Twitter, dailymile.com and her blog. She kept readers up-to-date on her running streak of 63 days. Without their encouragement, she says, she would have stopped.

When she became pregnant with her second child, and her doctor warned her about getting her heart rate too high, Jones began recording other workouts.

"It's been so good for me," Jones says. "If I put that elliptical workout or Zumba class, I might get feedback or ideas for another workout."

A time or two, she admits, she's posted her workout before she actually did it. That way, she knew she'd have to follow through.

"It's the ultimate accountability," Jones says. "You've published it, and you can't lie."

Blanca Gonzales uses her account on dailymile.com to keep track of her own workouts, as well as to see what friends across the country are doing.

"I have a friend from Oklahoma who's running a marathon in Michigan or Minnesota," Gonzales, mother of three sons, says. "We comment on each other's workouts. I have about 20 friends on it, and we push each other." She found out about the site by reading friends' posts on Facebook.

"It's free, that's the cool thing," Gonzales says. "You can do biking, running, whatever, and it keeps track of your miles and tells you how many calories you burn."

As of early June, it told her that in 87 workouts totaling 106.33 hours, she had run 749.74 miles (1206.5 kilometres) - enough to burn 408.15 doughnuts and power 1473 television sets.

When Tommy Johnson was training for the Ironman Louisville in Kentucky last August, he was corresponding on beginnertriathlete.com with various fellow participants. One decided to order T-shirts so everyone in the group would recognise one another.

"We got to the athletes' dinner before the race, and we all have these fluorescent, lime- green T-shirts," Johnson, 49, says. "About 20 of us showed up, and we all sat together." Without social networking, he says, he would never have met many of the people who are in his life these days. On the "Texas forum" spot on the site, he posts a workout: "Saturday I plan to do a 50-mile bike ride; who wants to come? I'll be leaving from Starbucks in Frisco at 7am." He hears back: "I'll be there; don't leave me!" Or, "How fast do you ride?"

"The first Beginner triathlete person I met was at a race in Lubbock," Johnson says. "We didn't arrange to meet, but I saw her bike rack and her standing by it. I must have seen a picture of her online, so I went up and started talking." Turns out she's in the United States Air Force and often posts from Iraq. Other US troops do so as well, then follow through with reports stateside of the triathlons for which they were training while overseas.

"Pretty inspiring," Johnson says.

- Dallas Morning News

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