I ran so Far Away to Try to Get Away: The Running Website You Need to Check Out

In SHAME Michael Fassbender spends all the time that he's not either a)staring at his naked sister, b)having sex with slores in alleyways, or c) making out with dudes, running and walking throughout Manhattan. It's supposed to evoke a man contemplating life as increasingly the only time we get to revel in our own thoughts, "clear my head" in the parlance of our times, is when away from the conveniences of computer or tv or car and moving and vibrating at too high a speed to consult our smart phones. The depiction of navel gazing and internal conflict is an old trick, movies have been doing it for years. Like Tom Cruise in FAR AND AWAY dropping off his upper class wench Nicole Kidman at her aristocratic parents' house with a bullet in her bodice, then running off, running from all the troubles and the class system and his inferiority and then SMASH to explosion as the transcontinental railroad is built. Or Forrest Gump after Jenny Leaves him.

And it works. You got some shit eating at you, the best thing is a long walk or run. As your body works, falls into autopilot your brain is free to roam, make its own connections, go where it needs to.

On the other side, as a man you need to be in shape. Or really good with an arsenal. Can't stress this point enough, people. My brother and I, the cartilage is rotting out of our knees and still we run every day. Not only to stay fit, healthy body makes a strong mind and better in the sack and all that. But also in case the Russians attack and we gotta get all RED DAWN. Or what if the tsunami strikes and you need to sprint for higher ground. Or your girlfriend gets held hostage by terrorists hijacking a building and you need to be able to run up and down, fighting dudes while sustaining epic beatings in a hail of bullets and blood.

So yeah, some of you can probably run on a treadmill. Or have one of those fancy watches or whatever to measure distance. Or access to a track and no qualms about running in circles for an hour. Good for you. For the rest of us, we're stuck coming up with routes we guesstimate to be sizable enough to make impact but offer the variety of a good outdoor tour. But we can't really measure them, have trouble knowing how far we're going and if you don't know if you ran 2 miles or 5 (an easy mistake without any guides), how the fuck can you know how hard you're working, how good of shape you're really in? There's a solution, my friends. A website where you can measure anything, whether that crosstown urban jog or that trail run or even the loop through your neighborhood. Map My Run.com

Save a few routes. Mark your progress, keep it up with Twitter, support other people and they can support you and all sorts of connected "we exercise together virtually" shit. I just use it to measure all the winding, obfuscated trail runs I make here in the hills of L.A. Why not? Weekend's coming up. And next thing you know it'll be summer and you'll need the energy to run around on the beach all day, get after it all night, , keep your job on a few hours of sleep and somehow keep your head clear and your lungs from collapsing under the weight of smokey rooms and too much booze.

Get running, bitches. Run so far away.

- Ryan