blogger for one

A few months ago, when a huge group of girls I know signed up to run a half-marathon, I of course declined to join the fun and sign up because:

a. I hate running
b. I hate waking up early on the weekend
c. I already work out, and even though I want to be in better shape, I'd really rather spend my free time getting better at physical activities that I enjoy and have a chance at getting good at

Some of the girls who signed up worked out even less than me (or didn't work out at all) - it seemed really painful to think about someone who doesn't even regularly work out training to run this kind of superhuman distance. But definitely admirable - I mean good for them if they're really going to take it seriously and train for this great cause.
One of these girls, whose blog I read fairly regularly out of bored curiosity, linked to a new blog she'd started to chart her marathon training progress.
My friend and I checked it every once in a while and found it a little bit funny, since her running blog just kept explaining why she wasn't running. Of course there were even some good reasons why she wasn't running, and nobody really judged her for it, except that it's a really popular half-marathon with a huge waiting list, so you'd think if you were not able to properly train for this really difficult feat you might just drop off and let another runner take your spot, and write off the registration costs as charity. Instead, the girls who didn't train ran the half-marathon anyway, and came in a little slower than a walking pace, and were subsequently resented for bragging about finishing the half by those who had trained hard and ran it in half the time while sustaining horrible, painful injuries.
I guess this girl must have seen that all of the hits on her statcounter were from a single location, because my friend was basically the only one reading her blog who she couldn't identify, so she must have figured out who it was. Of course, there is tons of friction between them from the past. When I randomly checked the final posting I lost it laughing - it was a personal letter to my friend that stopped just short of mentioning her name - it even mentioned the tech company she works at, which she must have seen in the logs. Only about an hour after I sent it to my friend and checked back again to have another laugh, I saw that it had been taken down, which could only mean that she checks her statcounter even more obsessively than I do. It's especially funny since my friend hadn't even seen this personal letter to her, which had been up for weeks, and the moment she read it it was taken down, as if the blogger had been waiting for weeks to do it.
While this is all totally catty gossip, gossip is never really interesting in and of itself - more a springboard for telling compelling stories and analyzing social and cultural patterns, and the psychological analysis of the lengths to which people will go. One day when early cyberspace is studied to examine its social internet behavior, this just might be one of many case studies on the psychological effects of interpersonal friction, female antagonism, and blogging for a perceived audience of one.