In other news, I’ve been reading a lot of random books lately and will do my best to post a summary of what I liked. So first on this list is two series by Joseph Robert Lewis. So in the interest of full disclosure Joe works for me, but he is writing a lot of stuff in his free time. Not sure how he does it. He is self publishing his material for Kindle and Nook. They aren’t expensive, but well worth the read. It’s mostly sci-fi/fantasy, but it’s probably best to go to his site and really get a good idea. Really interesting story lines and well worth the money and time. I’ve forced myself not to pick up his two most recent releases only so that I can get through some required reading and studying of my own and will allow myself the pleasure of reading his new stuff as reward. So drop by his page and tell him I sent you.

Something didn’t sit well with me about the barefoot part.  I like walking around the house barefoot.  That’s one of the reasons we have wall to wall carpet.  I did some searching and found some information about barefoot running and how many people were no longer experiencing shin splints.  That prompted me to look further and found these new shoes from Vibram.

They seem a bit extreme but the goal is to allow people to run barefoot but to just barely cover them to protect from the elements and ground debris.  I figured it was worth a try especially when the orthotics would run me about $600 for the first pair.  The last four months of wearing these has taken some getting use to, but overall the pain has gone away.  I wear them daily now to the office and have essentially stopped wearing any other footwear.  During Snowpacolypse I did wear my snow boots to shovel, but I quickly noticed the pain returning.  I’m not sure why that is the case since the goal of the shoes is to strengthen the muscles in your feet and allow it to flex naturally.

I just got a new pair of KSO Trek’s which is a slightly thicker sole with a leather top for my office wear.  They look a little nicer and fit better with the dress slacks.  The original KSOs are starting to break down.  That really is my only complaint.  One of the seams is splitting and the strap is starting to come apart.  I started wearing them regularly in December so four to five months seems a bit short.  Hopefully the Trek’s last longer since they are a leather top.  Next winter I’ll probably get a pair of Flow’s to deal with the winter cold.

I just started running in them.  This is the first time I’ve run anything more than a mile on pavement since 1996.  I’ll put up an update once I can actually run a full 5K along with the push-ups and squats programs I’m engaged in.

Instead I’ve embarked on something that I had tried in the distant past.  I know I’m never going to run a marathon or be ripped like a 20 year old.  But doing simple fitness items like push-ups, squats, sit-ups, pull-ups, and jogging should be within my ability … eventually.  So for the last six weeks I’ve been going through the 100 push-ups program.  The goal is eventually to be able to do 100 push-ups in one set.  I’ve had to repeat weeks three and four, so I haven’t finished the initial six week program yet, but already I’ve gone from less than 10 in a set to 20+.  I’m going to have to continuously repeat the whole program to get to the goal, but it’s a start.  This week I just added the 200 squats program to the list.

These programs seem to be effective and don’t take that much time.  There’s a straight forward progression and it’s pretty easy to see progress.  As I get closer to completing the first round of these two I’ll add sit-ups.  There’s also another site that has a program for getting to run a 5K.  Here’s to hoping the new shoes can help me run again without the knee and back pain.  I just got the Vibram Five Fingers, so I can’t give a good feel for them yet, but so far they seem to be working to reduce my foot pain.  One of these days I’ll talk about them a bit more.

The most attractive thing about these programs is the lack of equipment required.  It’s pretty cheap to engage in these activities and the author even went ahead and developed an iPhone app for each one.  It makes timing the rest period pretty easy and tracks all of your progress.  I think it would be pretty annoying to use the Twitter integration to post my progress, but who knows, maybe I’ll be vain enough to do so one of these days .  I bought a set of the Perfect Push-ups to reduce the wrist pain and after I lose some weight I may get a Perfect Pull-up to start those workouts as well.  Still that’s less than $60 overall.  If anything, the new shoes cost me more than that.

So here’s to yet another attempt to get healthy and lose some weight.  Hopefully going slower this time around will help me stay focused and motivated.