Conversations about each other's doings can be useful. I agree with the point that people do it to seek some validation of what they have done. We all like approval from others. (Do people not post their small achievements on MN; I mean come on, why should the rest of the world care if you've lost a stone?) Lighthearted, by the way.
Related to this, we are probably all familiar with: "how was your run today?" or "how was work today?". Let's be honest, when we ask that, we're mostly doing it to make conversation, but if we do ask, we should listen to the answer.
I think the skill here when telling of your run, gym, netball, whatever... is to mention one or two points which might be of interest. Seeing some funny behaviour by cats on your run might be far more interesting than how many seconds fewer the run took than yesterday.
My DP and I both play netball (contrary to popular belief, some chaps do play it! Shoot us now, no pun intended!), but usually not together. We often tell each other of funny moments which happened in each others' games, and an anecdote or two is enough for us. We don't bother to tell each other what position we played, the score, who got called for obstruction, whether someone was disqualified for having nails too long, etc.
Perhaps a great present for a bore is a diary. Perhaps the bores need to keep diaries, or put their results in a spreadsheet. I used to do this with things I thought nobody would be interested in, and I would work out statistics with them. Oh the joys...