Hi guys,

I won't b running in my st pattys day race because I'm going to have shoulder surgery later this week... So I found a 5k (this morning) and went a 33.37 !  It was pretty brutal... I have not been having very good training runs... However, I really wanted to push myself because this is going to be my last 5k for awhile.  I had absolutely no extra energy to sprint that last .1 - the finish was inside the Tennessee Titans stadium, tried to soak in the atmosphere and just get to that darn finish line.  Going from pavement to a football field was interesting.  Pleased with the time and effort, but I'm beat. 

Hope u all are doing well!

Anyone still running? Haven't been out in 3 weeks. New job, travelling, sick kids, trying to study etc so just haven't had a minute. On a day off today so got out and ran this morning. Made 20 minutes and then had to stop going up a hill. Took me 35 minutes to do 4.5km. Terrible! How quickly you lose it if you don't keep it up. Anyway back runnig this morning. Was really tough but glad to be back out there. It will be a struggle getting out with things being so busy but I am going to squeeze it in somewhere in my schedule. Well done Ssregatta on the 5K (fantastic time!) and I hope the surgery went well.

I was just coming to add a "Who's still going?" post, but I seem to have missed the last one.

I am still running, though not as regularly or as long as I'd like.  On average I'm running 2.5-3 miles about twice a week.  But every time I feel depressed about how little I'm running, I remind myself how impossible that would have been last fall and I feel a little better.  Not a lot better, but a little.

The running buddy thing hasn't worked out lately.  Instead of adding our motivation together to keep going, we ended up doubling our excuses to not go out.  I liked running with him, but I won't count on it anymore.

I went and picked up some Vibram's this week.  Mostly I've just been walking around in them but I've jogged a mile or so twice.  I'm not as enthusiastic as some people are about them, but I do like them, especially running in them.  I ran once in my "fancy" running shoes afterwards and they already felt heavy and make it hard for me to NOT heel strike.  After I got them I figured I should read Born to Run as it's seems to be popular enough to be cliche.  I only wish I'd read it sooner.  From the beginning to the end I felt like I wanted to go run a 50-miler.

It does seem that a nice side effect of my running is that my wife has seen how it's made me feel better and I'm pretty sure that she's going to try c25k with me.  I'm going to start from the beginning with her as soon as we get her some shoes and clothes that she'll be comfortable jogging in.  Timing this with getting the Vibram's should work well as it'll allow me to work my way up as my lower legs/feet get stronger.

If I was able to go to Italy for a couple weeks, I can't imagine doing anything differently than that!

I am still going here, though I'm just getting back from about a week I had to take off due to some foot pain caused by Too Much Too Soon in my Vibram's/barefoot.  I did a bit of trail running this weekend and loved it.  I don't have any close enough that I'll be doing it all the time, but whenever I get the chance, that's my new thing.  It was more difficult because of having more hills, but I'm looking at that as a good thing.

My wife has confirmed that she wants to start c25k, so I'll be starting over with her and running my normal 3ish miles on her off days.  I'm also hoping to start adding a long run on weekends.

This weekend I'm running in a fun looking mud/foam obstacle 5k (http://5kfoamfest.com/) with a guy from work.  I can't wait!

As far as tracking is concerned, I've just started using RunKeeper.  You should check it out and we can join "Street Teams" to follow others' progress.  I really only visit this site occasionally, and when I get an RSS notification of this thread being updated.

Glad you liked it!  I've already read it 3 times myself.

Sorry to hear about the injury.  Hopefully the healing process won't take too long.

The foamfest was a blast!  The only thing I'd have changed would be to have smaller groups of people racing, as we spent quite a while standing in line for some of the obstacles.

Here are a few pics.

In the first one, we just finished a belly crawl through mud under some barbed wire.  That's me on the right in the yellow shirt running with a friend.
In the second pic, that's my foot sticking up as I fell into the water.

And in the third pic that's me finishing the last foam filled slip and slide at the finish line.

http://imgur.com/a/lgeTB