I'm back!

OK, it's been a while but here is The Fool in full effect. Life got super busy there for a while and it just wasn't practical to be blogging. Life is still pretty busy but I have promised myself that as long as I keep things pretty short form, I can keep doing this. You'll notice that my logo changed to an homage of the Skechers Performance logo. It's been NB and Adidas in the past. More on why Skechers in a bit...

What's new with me? Well... let's see...

I had a stress fracture in my tibia, gained a little weight and recovered. I am now leaner than I was before the injury and running 30 miles a week and feeling really good. I haven't gained my pace back but for right now, I'll take the consistency, the recovery and general love of running.

I signed up for a Half Marathon. I'll be running the Chicago Half in September. I'm really looking forward to that. Officially, I want to just get a baseline run in under 2 hours. Unofficially, I want to shoot for 1:50. I'm honestly not sure where my fitness will be by then but we'll see how it goes. I want to enjoy running it - that's the over-riding objective.

I read a couple of books that I wanted to share with folks. I read Running with the Mind of Meditation by Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche. I read the Hanson's Marathon Method by Luke Humphrey and the Hanson's which influenced me running a half based on their training philosophies. I just finished Finding Ultra by Rich Roll. Maybe I'll do a brief post on each to share a few thoughts.

Charlie (7) just ran his first 5K with me at the Humboldt Park Dream Run and somehow managed to win 3rd in the under 19's division. I'll definitely make a post about that specifically.

I started volunteering at the Chicago Marathon and Shamrock Shuffle as a starting line coordinator. A friend of mine is the Operations Director for those races. It was a little nerve racking at first but it's a great experience and quite rewarding.

You may remember that I hadn't got that far making connections with the running industry. I got a free shoe from Mizuno and Adidas sent me some samples to check-out. Finally, I made a connection with Skechers. I am now testing shoes for them and loving the experience and the shoes. I'll definitely talk more about that but I have to be careful because I'm under an NDA (Non Disclosure Agreement). I'll ask them about the process of releasing information in a controlled and sanctioned way. I know Pete Larson (Runblogger) tests and releases info before shoes hit the stores.

That's about it as a first post but I just want to say that it's good to be back and I am as passionate about running as I was when I left off - maybe more so.