I ran a 5k solo, but with others

Solo but with others is kind the story of my life right now. As an employee of a distributed company, with teammates all over the world, I am physically alone in my home office, but am mentally together with people all day long. I chatter online at with customers from around the world and with colleagues in California, Florida, Texas, Washington, Canada, Wales, Sweden, England, Austria, Brazil, Malaysia, Australia…

I never feel alone, even though I am the only one in the room.

The same is true of my experience running the annual Worldwide WordPress 5k this year: I could have run a 5K in real life with my co-workers last week at our annual meeting in Utah, but I, um, didn’t.

Instead, I am taking the opportunity to join the worldwide WordPress community in running a 5K together this week — virtually — just like I join my coworkers every day. Starting today and going through November 1, members of the WordPress community will be running, walking, or crawling their own 5Ks and documenting their journeys on blogs using the tag WWWP5k. If you’d like to join, please do! You can find more details in the Automattic Worldwide WP 5K 2015 post on our news blog, Hot Off the Press.

My personal 5K journey was a quiet autumn one — my favorite kind. The air was crisp, and the gold and ruby colored leaves shone brilliant against a grey sky. The hills around here kill my legs and my lungs, but the views of the mountain sides are worth it.