On April 26^th, I wrote a post called Long Hair and Beard Slows Runner. It features Britt Davis, a fellow member of the Flying Irish running group and the Manito Runners Club. For a while it was my second most-read post. Now, my site statistics show it’s the most-read by a large margin.

It’s good that a post I wrote has done so well, but there’s a downside. It’s mostly about Britt Davis. This is really bothersome because I want everything to be all about me. What’s even worse is that Britt offered to be the subject for a post on long hair and beards. Oh, I just hate having to admit he came up with the idea for my most-read post.

When a new article is posted, it receives its greatest number of viewers that day, or the next day if I posted late. Over time, fewer and fewer people go to that page. After several days, the post gets read very sporadically, and most days, not at all.

However, Long Hair and Beard Slows Runner is a different story. It went downhill like other posts, but it kept showing up in my stats as being viewed a bit more frequently than others. After a while, it started showing up nearly every day. Now, more than two months after it was published, it’s gaining steam.

I wondered why it was pulling in readers. Back in May I googled long hair and beard and found that the post was on the third page of the results. Someone with a little computer background could probably explain why this post showed up on the third page out of several million results for this search term, but I really don’t know how it happens. I have no idea how search engines work. As well, the posted photo of Britt made it onto Google’s long hair and beard images. My desktop displays 40 rows of images and though Britt was near the bottom, I thought it was something that he was even there.

Every so often I googled long hair and beard, and each time I found that Britt’s photo and the post about him climbing. I checked just today and the post is now on the first page of the search results, second item down, right after images for long hair and beard. And in those images, Britt is in the third row. He’s ahead of images of Paul Rudd, Keanu Reeves and Ashton Kucher. I’m so incensed because if I had thought to grow my hair long and start a beard, it’d be me there instead of Britt.

I guess I should share the stage and give Britt credit. However, I’ve discovered I have a claim to fame, too. I know that not many people would google this topic, but if you did runners in capes, guess whose picture is the first one.