So happy May or Happy Health Awareness month, depending on which side of the Jane Fonda fence you're on. Part of the festivities here in the office today was to 'dress the part', so there are many people dressed in sweats and workout attire. A couple of my favorites are Tara (One of our wonderful content managers here at Zappos) and Nick (another Content Team stud-muffin) They're totally decked out with some pimpin 80's workout gear. Very nice, Tara and NIck! The real reason I'm writing though is because I'm sitting here at my desk feeling really weird wearing my running shorts at work. Besides how white my thighs are and how scrawny I look in white, I have a draft 'down there' - Never had THAT happen at work.

I just whistled at Nick, 'Nice Addictions' - Now I feel naked AND dirty.

Kelly (our resident running stud) and I had the opportunity to make a trip to Nashville this past weekend to check out the inner workings of the Nashville Country Music Marathon and Half Marathon, put on by Elite Racing. We landed in Nashville and went immediately over to the Health and Fitness Expo. Since the race was on a Saturday, Friday afternoon was absolutely crazy with floods of people. The race itself would have a record 30,000+ runners in attendance and trust me, it seemed that there could’ve easily been 20K people at the expo itself when we got there! Whew!

I don’t know how, but the Expo peeps did a great job funneling people through, without a doubt! After the expo, we headed over to watch the Kids Marathon - How inspiring this event was for the future of all kids – Get them kids off the couch and enroll them in a running event ASAP! Those kids were so cute!!! Ahhhhhhhh! I can just throw them all in my pocket and keep ‘em forever! We were told that we can run a little in the marathon itself to check out the ‘Rock N Roll’ feeling of the marathon – We’re looking forward to this – All the remarkable feelings of running a race with none of the stress of performing, BRILLIANT!!!

A special thank you goes out to John Smith from the Competitor Group, Inc for showing us around and Elite Racing – You guys R O C K!

It's always inspiring when you go to any race and watch. These girls are absolutely incredible. I want to do a Tri at some point in my life, but I'm not a swimmer so it's gonna take a lot to get me to do one. I will though...One day. It was a really nice day for a race and I'm feeling soooooooo much better than I felt all week. Although the expo was still open for business (it shouldn't have been), I still had the opportunity to check out a good portion of the race (Thank you to Zappos Zealot Gayle for workin' the booth). Zappos' very own, Kelly Bennett, came in third overall in the sprint! She rocks! We're VERY proud of her - She's worked really hard over the last bunch of months training for her big race in Florida's Half Ironman in May. GOoOoooooooooOoOooOooooo, KELLY BENNETT!

She's also one of our athletic buyers - Passion for shoes and the sport...I love it

Carla (our sock buyer), Janelle (one of our customer loyalty representatives), Jay (our Product Info guy for Athletic) and I had a great opportunity to go out to Burlington, North Carolina, to see the life of a sock - Well, how a sock is crafted anyway. We were fortunate to go on this trip because of the good heart of the Wrightenberry Mills peeps. Tom Weber, our main man at Wrightsock (Tom R O C K S!), came to our ‘Treat your Feet Expo' (an expo we hold for our employees that gets them familiar with all the brands and products we have on the site) we had at Zappos the end of last year. Tom offered up a trip to NC for us and a lucky raffle winner - TOTALLY AWESOME and really, really generous - So, Thanks Wrightsock!

You have no idea how crazy the whole process of making socks is until you go to a sock mill. WOW! The machinery, the rolls and rolls and rolls and rolls and rolls and rolls and rolls of yarn, the amount of people that physically touch a good quality sock- All of it, absolutely unreal. Wrightsock is a double-layer sock that adopts the idea of two pieces of fabric that rub against each other rather than one piece of fabric rubbing against your skin AND it wicks moisture away from the foot - BLISTER FREE, and it totally works.

Just about our entire Zappos team used them for the JanSport 8000m Challenge last fall and I personally have become a HUGE believer in the product for running. Wrightsock Double-Layer Rocks!