Kevin, what's going on in Staunton? preaching is much easier than practicing. . Eliz, thanks. good luck with everything! & congratulations on your progress. hi Roberta! Nice to hear from you. enjoy your trip... is it a vacation? Linda, I understand why you like KR, but I'm glad you're here too. good job, Jem! I look over to see if anybody is still at Tom's thread once in a while. have you heard anything from Patty or Shell? Patty started posting more on the cr daily just around the active switch, I don't think i've seen her here. what a difference in one day. I'm so glad your meds helped. & that the cold doesn't bother you as much. wonder what that means. the only muscular difference I know of doesn't explain why the mix is easier for me, but i'll keep trying it. I might have done just a little too much this morning... amazing how stupid I can be. i was going along, calculating how much a 10% increase would be today over last time, (not that i should push for that anyway) then later I realized that that doesn't apply to injury recuperation. anyway, the run walk mix, including w/u & c/d, was 1.99 miles. a little sore after, stood to eat my breakfast. Jem, we'll take what we can get . I am so happy about DS! . & the rest of them too. thanks, I'm at least getting some questions answered. some new ones came up today. I have one more appointment. I hope I can use it effectively. I'm making a list of questions. seems like that's where I came in last year when we first started this!

Welcome, Teresa! I signed up for the 1,000K club, too. So far, the pace bunny is whooping me, but I think it's cool to be able to track mileage that way. Eliz

Welcome Teresa!! Debbie - on the cold, well my bronchials last year were extremely irritated, so guessing its just better bronchial health why I'm doing better due to the new meds. I feel so much better overall, I think more clearly, I can walk normally most of the time, am able to play with my kids again, etc. Its really a good feeling Re: tom's thread, Patty has been posting to it the last few days, so Tom & I have also. I gave her the links for KR & CR. Rehabbing doesn't include 10% rule! What I'd like to see you do, is learn to listen to your body. Really that is the best thing to do in this situation, and avoid hurting because it only prolongs the process. Hang in there!! MY comment about positions is because my experience has been that I walk & run so differently on the treadmill than on the ground, typically I strain my upperback, neck even more - because I hunch over.. have to be very concious to lean back. So, just thought you might have some differences between walking & running... good for you on the 1.99 miles, well kinda, I'd like to see you do whatever you can without hurting, ok? no worries about how much, how far.. any amount is all good. I had to learn those things the hard way, & believe me it took a long, long time. Very important for the long term....

Thanks for the welcome, guys! Kevin, we are in North Yarmouth, just north of Portland and a neighboring town of Freeport. It's a quiet, rural community that's great to run in. 3 or 4 years ago, we rented a cabin on Little Sebago for a week. It was nice! The 1000 km club is one of the user groups. When you sign up for it, the mileage you enter is automatically entered on a graph. There is a pace bunny icon that indicates how far you should be at any time to stay on track to make your goal. The pace bunny runs 24 hours a day, so his mileage is always changing! There is also a 1000 mile club and other distances, also. I signed up for the 1000 mile club, too, just to see how close I can get. Maybe I will make it in 2009! Thanks, dg3! Yes, we still have about 3 feet of snow on the ground. No snow predicted next week, though. My friend Robin is a runner. When she heard I wanted to lose weight, she said I should try running. I said, "No, thank you, I'm NOT a runner." She said, "I'll pick you up tomorrow afternoon for a run!" So she basically dragged me. She was the first person who taught me I didn't have to run the WHOLE way. She had me run from one telephone pole to the next, and then walk to the following one. So I did that for a few months, but then a woman ran into me on a ski slope (I was in the SLOW SKIING ZONE, beginner's trail, with my DD 7) and I tore my MCL. When I finally healed from that, I had a bike accident and my doctor said I couldn't run for a couple of months. So I was pretty discouraged, but then I bumped into an old neighbor who mentioned she was starting to run using the Couch to 5k program. I told her I would do it with her! So we started that in October 2006, and ran all last winter. We couldn't even run 4 minutes straight at the start, so we had to repeat a few of the weeks (how did they think we could go from running 8 minutes to 20 minutes in one shot??). We entered a 5k race at the end of April. I ran almost all of it, and I was so excited! I ran a total of eight 5ks in 2007. I did a little walking in most of them, but towards the end of the summer I started running all of them. By November, I'd lost 30 pounds, and my husband had to shave off his beard (that was the deal I'd made with him!). Now my running partner and I are training for the Maine Half Marathon on September 21. We both think we're probably nuts, but we'll do our best. In April, she and I are going to my hometown, Austin, for a visit and we'll run the Schlotzsky's 5k Bun Run while we're there. My 15-year-old son is a talented long-distance runner for his high school cross country and track teams. He is a great encouragement and inspiration. He can run a mile in 4:52, 5k in 17:06, and 10k in 37:15. Well over twice as fast as his old mom! We can't figure out where he gets his running genes. He's hoping to continue his running career in college. So that's my story in a nutshell, and I'm looking forward to getting to know everyone! Teresa

Good morning Everyone, Alright Rinda, I will go next. I am Mike. I too was a non-runner until Sept '06. I was divorced and kind of in that part of my life where I was still questioning who and where I was. I think I was missing direction. Anyway, I happened to be in Virginia Beach with my sister and her husband, visiting my younger brother for a weekend of riding motorcycles around the Tidewater area. While there, we tried to ride through Virginia Beach and were unable to due to some race that was going on. We later found out that is was the Virginia Beach Rock-n-Roll half marathon. The next day, my brother-in-law (who had run the Chicago Marathon ~10 years earlier) asked my brother (a navy SEAL) if he would want to run that race next year. My brother quickly responded with a snort "No". No one considered asking me. But, I got to thinking that I needed something to work toward. My health was nothing to be proud of. So, I volunteered to run with my brother-in-law. I started with the Couch to 5K program and have been running since. I finished the Va Beach Rock-n-Roll half this past labor day with a time of 2:26. WOO HOO! I don't have any races planned for this coming year, but I'll get that figured out soon enough. A little more about me, I work for the State of Ohio, have two sons that are both grown and live out of state. One in the army and the other in school in Phoenix. So, It's just me and the dogs, Jake and Maggie. Having said that, I'm embarassed to say that I looked over my log this morning and see that I have skipped two runs so far this week. Not good. I went hiking with a new friend yesterday, so maybe I can count that for yesterday's run. So, I'm thinking I should at least do six miles this afternoon. By the way, it's like 50 degrees outside. Cheers, Mike PS, Did Laurie go AWOL again?

OK, I just got back from my run. 6 miles. My legs felt a little heavy at the start but felt OK after a little while. Eliz. I took that photo at a biker event. I couldn't help notice the little guy walking with his Grandpa. He was a little biker for sure. Cheers Everyone! Mike

Here's my story: Have always thought of myself as somewhat of an athlete but it was much more theory than practice. Discovered, and quickly became addicted to, kayaking in the summer of 2005. Walked a 5K on the bridge over the bay where I kayak that November and decided to start running to get in better shape to paddle the following summer. Started C25K but gave up after about 3 weeks - couldn't take the cold and dark. February 2006 - severely strained/sprained my rotator cuff and thought my kayaking career was over before it had really begun. Sat in the hairdresser's chair a few days later in severe pain, hating the way I felt, hating what I was looking at in the mirror even more, and came home and wrote a contract to myself to get in shape. Started C25K on March 4, 2006 and haven't missed more than a week of running ever since. Shoulder is better, so I've spent many wonderful hours with a kayak under my backside the last two summers as well. Learned to sail last summer, too, which is totally a blast! Didn't lose any weight through the first 3 months of running. Ran a 5K that June, which I DNF'd, which for some strange reason made me even more determined. Started counting calories in June '06 and lost 25+ pounds by Christmas. Have since gained some back, but am starting over with the weight loss plan. 2008 will be the year I get my BMI from "obese" to "normal." Have since completed 4 5Ks, including the one where I DNF'd the year before, but I'm still so slow that I don't really like racing yet. No, truly, I HATE racing, but I do a few a year because I figure some day I'll actually not be in the last 10 finishers and may actually like it. I'm training for the 10-miler connected with the Ocean Drive marathon at the end of March, but may chicken out and wait to do the Broad Street Run in Philly in May, also a 10-miler. (Did I mention that I hate racing?!?!?) Am slowly increasing mileage from about 12 mpw to 20 or so. I have this fantasy that I'll run the Disney Marathon to celebrate my 50th birthday, which is three years from this Saturday. (Gulp, I'm way, way on the downside of 40! Yikes! How'd that happen?!?) I'm single and live in the Philly suburbs, but spend most of the summer and many weekends near Ocean City, NJ. I teach middle school classroom and choral music to keep me in running shoes and gear and to pay the mortgage. Love the kids; hate what public education, particularly arts education, has become. My goal in life is to retire early to become a private-music-teaching, singing, running, kayaking, sailing beach bum. The sooner the better! Oh, and I'm wordy, in case you haven't noticed. I'm also so glad to have found a new online running home at RA and to be back with my boomer newbie buddies. So glad, in fact, that I truly don't miss that other site that shall remain nameless at all. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Oh, ran 4.2 today. Felt really creaky during the first mile, but better the rest of the way. Am still a little behind on the 10-mile training plan, but knew this would happen once school started again. Going to keep plugging away and use the Monday holiday (and perhaps a day off later in the month - shhh!) to catch up. Good runs, all, Eliz

WOW! Thrilled to see everyone back. I think the old CR crowd is here minus our UK buddy. Anyone heard from her? Welcome Theresa. Another New Englander here. Western Mass for me. But I am a transplant from Hawaii. So our high of 46 today was fridged to me. I'll join in on a quick bio too (loved reading the other ones)....45 y/o single mom with 3 kids, one grown. A 16 and 12 y/o at home. 16 y/o is a talented athlete but cant run due to knee injuries. She's my running, triathlon and racing partner. I came into running a few years ago from taekwondo. My DD and I quit tkd to take up triathlon and therefore was forced into running. I quickly learned that I was more of a runner than a cyclist or swimmer. DD seems to be good at all of it which frustrates slow old mom. Anyhow my long run is 8 miles. A hamstring injury and colds and flu has cancelled my AZ half marathon plans. Those plus Kim's bad knees. So I am now aiming for a June half with one of my running partners. I run weekly with a womens running club and with two of my running partners, Sue and Bill. Bill has been promoted from running partner to boyfriend. I rarely run with him though because he surpassed me months ago. He's like a running prodgidy. Adds miles like its nothing and runs fast like a teenaged track star. Eliz, dont worry about being behind of the plan. Plans should be flexible and are always changing. I know this the hard way. I didnt realize you were coming back from a shoulder injury too. Wow. Talk about detirmination. Mike, so hows things? Email me if you want. Whats your next race goal? Well I have improved from all bad runs to some bad some good. I struggled with 4 miles with the women yesterday. But then last week I went out alone and did my 2nd fastest 5k time ever. Its good days and bad now. Which is better than all bad. Kim is going to a orthopedic surgeon next month for her knees. She still wants to train for Boston in 09 so I hope they can fix her and get her back on the road. Went snowboarding with Kim Sat. Now I feel like someone beat me with a baseball bat. I must have fallen 30+ times...and it was only a half day. But I am a gluten for pain and will go back out this Sat for some more beating on a snowboard. Take care all. Keep us posted on your progress Theresa. Laurie