R.I.P. Evan Hone's Blog

Note: Evan's blog is back.. no wait it is gone again, no it is back again, or is it gone again? Any how check here. You just gotta love the guy;-)

As the "Crypt Keeper" for Evan Hone's Blog(google, "Evan Hone Blog" and you will know what I am talking about) I thought I should put up this memorial for those of you who would like to pay your respects to an irreverent ultrarunning blog gone before it's time.

I know that some of you are wondering why Evan deleted his blog and quit blogging a few weeks ago so I took it upon myself to ask him and Evan was kind enough to answer a few questions(he texted the answers while in a meeting at work).

EJ- When and why did you start blogging? 

Evan- I started the blog back in 2008.  I was living in a 1 bedroom cabin in the Chugach State Park 100 yards from the Crow Pass trailhead.  Beside Geoff there was zero representation in the mountain running world coming from Alaska.  I thought it would be fun to write about my absurd adventures in the "last Frontier".  I thought it would be a local thing but I started getting quite a bit of traffic from the lower 48. 

  

EJ- Under what names did your blog appear chronologically and was there a reason for the name changes?

Evan- In the beginning I was the Eagle River Runner.  I am from Eagle River and my parents still live there.  It is a town 10 miles north of Anchorage. I then moved to California and changed the blog name several times after that.  Every title ended up being worse than the last.

  

EJ- What was your favorite post? 

Evan- Every post was terrible.  HA!  I did have some good ones about my adventures in the wilderness with my dog Ernie.  I also had a lot of fun making fun of people that wear short shorts, arm sleeves, heartrate monitors, and GPS watches.

  

EJ- What post still makes you cringe? 

Evan- A couple of shoe reviews I did.  The 2 kinds of blogs I hate are when people write about their weekly mileage and when they do gear reviews.  I am not a gear guy and do not keep a record of how much I run so I am never interested in that crap and can't believe I wrote about it occasionally.

  

EJ- Was blogging satisfying and worth your time?

Evan- Nope. 

  

EJ- Did you take it personally if there were few or no comments for a post?

Evan -I always wondered about why some posts that I thought were boring would generate a ton of comments and some that I thought were fantastic generated little interest.

  

EJ- Did you check your stats often? 

Evan- Nope.  I did not even realize there was a way to check the stats for the first couple of years.  My boss gets pissed about how little I know about computers.

  

EJ- Why did you stop blogging?

Evan- I have a couple of kids (had a little girl in August) and a full time career.  I do not have time to obsess about running like I used to.

  

EJ- Why the avatar of the large guy? 

Evan- A lot of people take this stuff way too seriously.  I thought that picture was hilarious.  A glam shot of me wearing short shorts would have been too cheesy.  HA!

  

EJ- Do you miss blogging?

Evan- Nope.  I like being away from it.  Occasionally I hack into my wife's facebook account and I see how consumed people become with running.  It is literally all they talk about.  I do not want to be one of those people that lets running consume their lives.  Running is a major part of who I am but once I am healthy I am done talking about it and plan on just putting in the time to get better.

  

EJ- Do you think you will blog again? 

Evan- I doubt it.  There are already too many blogs out there.  Also now that I live in California there just isn't as many cool things to write about. People down here think it is epic when they run in the rain or in a little bit of snow.  Thousand Oaks has some good mountain running but it is not Alaska.  I have yet to be charged by a large brown bear down here. 

  

EJ- What was the worst/best thing that you got from blogging? 

Evan- It is very time consuming but I did like to look back on past posts to remember some of the fun times had on the trails. 

  

EJ- How is your hip? 

Evan- Terrible.  I am now having surgery on my right hip (labrum FAI) very soon.  Same thing I had on my left hip.   I have been running injured since August of 2009.  I would give anything to be healthy again and be able to run solid mileage.  My last race I ran was Leona Divide 50 last April and my training for the 2 months leading up to it was maybe 50 miles per week because I had to take so much time off because of hip problems.   

  

EJ- What kind of training are you doing these days? 

Evan- My training is hit or miss because of my hips.  I view myself as a mountain runner and not an ultrarunner.  It is all about climbing and I only like to do races that have a lot of climbs.  As long as my quads are always sore I am a happy man.

  

EJ- Are you doing your 100-ups daily? 

Evan- Not sure what this means?  Push-ups?

  

EJ- What do you think of people who do google searches for you? 

Evan- Not sure.   There are a lot better, more interesting runners out there.

  

EJ- Have you ever google searched another runner/s and why? 

Evan- Sure.  I like to google friends and read publications that talk about them.  I also keep a close eye on the Alaskan running scene.

  

EJ- Any "Final Words" you would like to add about blogging, Bloggers, Blogs or ultrarunning?

 Evan- I spent a couple of hours volunteering/hanging out at the Santa Monica 50k yesterday.  I was so jealous of the runners out there.  I really just want to get healthy.  

Evan, Thank-you so much for answering my questions and all the best with your upcoming surgery.

EJ