Quite a few – Puja, Malabika, Indrani, Ashok, Samaresh and Sudipto braved the near freezing temperatures!!!

Hit the trail with the Deb family…

I was getting ready to post this morning’s run in my blog (and Facebook) when FB showed the events from this day (Dec 29) in the last few years. Incredibly enough – last year on this day, I ran the same route (as evidenced by FB’s timeline pictures) and I was wearing yellow that day too. I remember that Sharmila was in India (just like today) and I went to put in a run before the kids would wake up (again, just like today). The big difference is it was a cold, dreary winter morning last year in the mid 30s; whereas, today was a bright sunny morning in the mid 60s.

Something tells me Dudley is going to relate to this story 🙂

Last time I met Biplab was about seven or eight years back. His son was verg young then. They left for India and then this year have come back to California. Found out yesterday that they were visiting Atlanta for a few days. Couple of phone calls later, we scheduled our run this morning at one of his old beats – Cochran Shoals trail by theChattahoochee River.

I might have taken some great strides in becoming a minimalist in many aspects of life, but when it comes to running shoes (and fountain pens), I am a total maximalist. I have not let gone of a single pair of shoes that I have ever run in.

Retired a few of my shoes today (nearing 300 miles each) and activated a few more. Right now, I have hoarded 35 pairs of running shoes over 11 years spanning six brands – Brooks, Asics, New Balance, Nike, Adidas and Reebok.

If the shoes could write their own autobiographies, that would be an amazing anthology for I am run in some truly beautiful settings and some real extreme weather conditions.

The pair on the top shelf second from right – Brooks: Every other shoe owes them something – that is how I got started in running.

The pair on the second shelf from the top, third from left was my first competitive half marathon at 1 hour 54 mins (Dallas White Rock Half Marathon).

The orange pair at the bottom shelf – that was my only marathon ever at 5 hour 5 mins in Greece this year.

About fifteen pairs of shoes have run in foreign countries and almost the same number have won some kind of medals.

You can even see in the middle row my fling with minimalist running (also called barefoot running – although you do not run literally barefoot) for a couple of years till I got injured and switched back to supported shoes.

Ah! Little things please but little minds!!!

Temperatures-a-dropping

Chalupa-herd-a-thinning

Sharmila and I were the only ones who started the run today. Later Samaresh caught up with us. The Chalupa group has started taking the familiar winter look 🙂 In their defense, though, we started the run at 28 degrees F (-2 C). It was cold.

with even more beautiful running friends… Today’s 5K was paced by Puja who was clipping at 5:40 min/mile at the end.

First thing in the morning – keeping up with a 16 year old high school Field and Track athlete (Puja) over 5K. Emerged none the worse for wear. But the best part was the Starbucks coffee with the running mates and the Bengali “adda” !!!