Following a marathon-and-a-half with Latitude

A few months ago, I started something crazy. Like a lot of Googlers, I work in Mountain View, CA but live in San Francisco, 37 miles away. When I moved to SF, I got hooked on the local cycling craze, and I fell in with a group that cycles to commute. Early on, biking to work was something audacious. Eventually, I decided that I wanted to do something that felt audacious again. So I decided to run to work to raise money for Teach for America.

Now 37 miles is a lot -- about a marathon and a half. I'm thinking it'll take me about 6 hours. For the past 4 months I've been training, and now finally, tomorrow is the big day! Throughout the training, lots of people have said they'd love to see the run, but oddly, none of them were up for coming along. So, I decided to do the next best thing. I'm going to take my Latitude-enabled phone with me, and let people follow along from home. I've been blogging about my training and I've embedded the Google public location badge on my blog for the big day. This badge lets me make my Latitude location public and share my progress on the run with anyone who views my blog, even if we're not Latitude friends.

So, if you're up tomorrow, October 16, at 2:30 AM Pacific Daylight Time (or anytime over the next 6 hours or so), check out my progress and see if I make it into work on time. I could use the virtual encouragement!



Updated: I made it! 6 hours, 90 ounces of water, 3 energy gels and 1 banana later. Well, time to get back to work. Hope you all get our and run today!

Posted by Matt Ghering, Googler