The blog is 12 years old

Twelve years ago I decided to create a blog on Athletics. I had some experience with blogging and after having read Juliand's excellent monograph "Rethinking Track and Field" I decided that I had some ideas of my own that I would like to cast into writing. I had been publishing longer articles in "New Studies in Athletics" (a journal, alas, killed by Lord Sebastian's belt tightening) but I had ideas that would not justify a full article and which were still worth publishing. So, I decided to create this blog and, as a tribute to Juliand, I plagiarised his title. (A funny remark is in order here. While writing this post I decided to go back to the original "Why rethinking" article and I discovered that the photo of Juliand's book was blurred. And I hadn't noticed that for 12 years! I replaced it and, at long last, the photo is now sharply focused). 

I would never have predicted that the blog would be alive for more than a decade. I try to publish between 30 and 50 articles per year and I have never let a month pass without publishing something. The one thing I cannot control are the views. and to tell the truth I cannot understand what is happening. Here is the history of the blog views.

I don't have any explanation for the spikes in 2017 and 2019. The huge spike in 2025 appeared at the time of the World Championships but I don't think that there was a real correlation. What one can claim is that since 2023 there are more visits to the blog. But are those due to physical readers or caused by the training of some Large language Model (that is learning how to blog in my style)? Some of the spikes are associated to huge (unexplainable) spikes in some particular article: why is the article "Before the curtain falls: a jaunt into gerontology" the third most viewed one with a huge peak of 5 k in July 2019, when it was published (and has between 0 to 3 daily views since)? Normal views look rather like the one of the pole vault history

 where there are a few decades of daily views. Anyhow the blog has surpassed 400 k views for roughly 500 articles.

The crucial question is where do we go from here. The truth is that I like writing articles for the blog. I do not hesitate to be irreverential and critical. My readers know that there are athletes that I like and others that I don't (even some that I despise). So, as long as I have ideas for new articles I will continue writing the blog. Let us meet here next year.