Off Topic: The hidden world of running Segments

I started running last year after reading Ben Wilson's wonderfully Brysonian memoir, One Year Without Social Media, a memoir that properly soars whenever 5Ks and 10Ks are in the offing.

I often walk with a stick for balance, so I assumed that running would be beyond me. It turned out it wasn't. Sure, I have wallowed for a year, moving back and forth between the middle weeks of Couch to 5K, but I'm still running, and I haven't fallen yet. Turns out I like running! I read books about it. I bought a snood. I talk to other runners. I have Parkrun friends!

One thing I've become completely fascinated with is an oddball intersection of running and technology: Strava Segments. Wilson mentioned Strava in his memoir - a sort of app-based Facebook-alike that is just about sport. I've had it for the best part of a year now, firing it up whenever I go for a run, paging through my friends' runs, in love with the whole New York Trilogy way that a morning's activity becomes a geographical tangle on a map.