Readers Letters

There are a number of reason’s for my creating this blog, initially I wanted to see how the downloadable version of WordPress compared with the hosted version. In my day job, as an IT manager i’m occasionally asked for recommendations as to which blog platform is best for different users, so I often sign up to different technologies to see how they work).

I also thought  the blog would make a good platform to support my Himalayan 100 race in 2010, keeping friends, relatives and sponsors up to date with my training and fundraising and sharing photos when I got back.

But that was for years ago, and I’m no longer using the blog for fundraising, so why am I continuing to post? I’d like to think it was to share lots of useful information with other runners, but I guess the main reason is that I love to write.

Over the years I’ve written all sorts of stuff, at one point I regularly wrote Technotes a technology column in the Journal, but I’ve also written one off magazine articles and even copy for websites and print.

While I was writing blog post one day it to me that far more people would read it if it were published in one of the running magazines rather than on my little blog. When I got to thinking about this, I started to wonder just how well the kind of things I blogged about would transfer to running magazines. I guessed that none of the running magazines would want to commission something from me and decided that reader’s letters was could be the easies route to print.

I found a few running and fitness magazines lying around the house, each had its own style, so i’d need to tweak the articles a little to suite each one. I deliberately decided not to read the existing readers letters, simply to pick a subject, write a letter and send it off and see where I got. If i didn’t get published i’d look at the letters that had made it  and have another go.

I wrote 5 letters one to each magazine, 2 of those submissions were published, one was published as a star letter and landed me a pair of brooks trainers and a jacket. After reading published letters in each magazine  I targeted by letters and  sent off 4 more letters, 3 of which were published, including another star letter winning a gps watch and another pair of trainers.

By this time I’d accomplished my goal having been published in all 5 running magazines, but I written another couple of letter before I’d realised I’d be published in all 5 magazines, so I posted them anyway. Very much to my surprise these were also published, making it 3 months in a row for one of the magazines.

My experience with Readers Letter’s was a lot of fun, there was something very exciting about checking the book shelves each month to see if i’d made it into print and it proved to be as rewarding as it was challenging.