Internet a Great Information Source, But Old Data Often Disappears

When I was updating my cumulative running record yesterday, I naturally clicked on some of the links of races held years ago.  In almost every one of the articles, somewhere I would offer a link to the site that had posted the particular results online.  Unfortunately, for most of the links I found closed-down webpages...that doesn't mean that the results were necessarily lost, though.  There are now websites, most notably Athlinks, that have researched past public running races across the country and compiled them...I found quite a few of my old races in their database.  I am grateful for this blog for I wonder, had I not faithfully written up each race as they happened, that I would have lost any record of them ever having taken place.  Then I extended that thought to other areas in my life and realized that there is a place for personal journaling, which includes writing about my experiences and thoughts that I might not necessarily share with the world over a public blog.  In his recent book Level Up, personal development podcaster Rob Dial emphasizes the importance of personal journaling, offering topical cues at the end of each chapter. While his reasons for journaling make sense, I also see in it the retention of past details, recorded when they happened and then lying dormant for future reference.  The Internet, to be sure, is loaded with information...but old websites sometimes just wither away, it seems...along with the data they had previously offered.  I'm grateful for sites like Athlinks that try to preserve old online records, but not every area in life is conducive to that level of data recovery...