100 days of weight loss

Having whittled down the pounds to 160 by late summer, I let things slip a bit, and then took a long trip to Africa (hardly any running!), with predictable outcome: back to 173 pounds, body fat percentage way up there.  I don't even want to look at the bodyfat measuring calipers right now.

So we are essentially back where we started in early April this year.  Nice, real nice... :-(


I guess the only way out of this is to get a jumpstart on New Year's resolutions by starting a 100 day weight loss program today.  Nothing like the present.  So here goes with Day #1. 

Pretty decent nutrition with raisin bran for breakfast, a veggieburger for lunch, some leftover udon noodles and edame for a snack, and Cuban black bean stew & brown rice with some steamed corn for dinner.  Just white tea and water otherwise. 

Plenty of exercise.  One hour session (mostly arms, chest & some abs) with the personal trainer and 5.44 miles running (approx. 10 minute pace) with Leopold and Lewis.  It is almost a resistance workout running with those two; they are constantly dragging me in the direction of other dogs, rabbits or squirrels.  Fortunately not under a bus yet. Have to do something about Leopold's dog-agressive behaviour.  He is such a sweet animal, just adorable but must have had a bad experience with another dog sometime in his past.  Where is the dog whisperer guy when you need him.  I haven even seen him on TV lately.  Been watching too many episodes of Dexter. 

100 days of weight loss, incidentally, is the title of an e-book I found on Amazon/Kindle. 

 One of the things you have to do is to write down 10 reasons why you want to lose the weight.  Ten might a few too many but I can think of 5:

1)  To improve my running speed.  In about 5 months I will be entering a new age bracket and it will likely be my last best chance to do some damage in the age group competition. But not if I look like Jared when he was still wearing those big big pants.
2)  Fit into my clothes.  A couple of years ago I had a bunch of my pants taken in by 2 inches or so.  I can't very well go back to the same tailor person now and stupidly ask for them to be taken out again.  So suck it up buttercup and drop the elbees.
3)  See my abs one last time.  Yeah there comes a time when abs disappear for good: unless I uncover them pretty quickly they will go the way of the Edsel and the manual typewriter, or join Jimmy Hoffa in an undisclosed location, never to be seen again.
4)  Be able to run without a shirt next spring/summer.
5)  Maintain good health.  Too much blubber around the middle and my cholesterol is bound to increase beyond acceptable levels, and I definitely do not want to have issues with borderline high blood sugar levels again. 

Weight today:  173
Bodyfat percentage:  In denial, will check tomorrow.

Should you run barefoot?

That is the title of an interesting article in today's Parade Magazine, which is inserted into the Sunday edition of our local daily the Houston Chronicle. Nothing really new there except to confirm that running barefoot isn't 'bad for you'; a 2009 review article based on searches of 30 years of running studies did not find any research demonstrating that running shoes make people less prone to injury.

Having purchased a pair of Vibram Five Finger shoes some six months ago (thanks Billy for the tip!), I have been using them for the occasional short run of about a mile or so. This afternoon, I decided to step that up a little, if you'll pardon the pun. Strapped on or rather toed into the Vibrams (it gets easier but not a lot) and set off for 3 miles with Daisy. Running all but barefoot is a weird sensation especially for someone who has run on 'regular' running shoes since 1970. Not that there is a great deal of similarity between my first real running shoes - a pair of (now) legendary Nike Waffle Trainers - and most of the high tech shoes of today. In fact the first generation running shoes dating back to the mid 70's running boom were quite spare with a minimum of cushioning. Those were the days of Frank Shorter (who won the 1972 Olympics Marathon) and 'Boston Billy' Rodgers (4 Boston and 2 New York wins) when a decent marathon pace (for recreational runners) was anything under 8 minutes/mile. Like our running heroes, we were were looking for speed, not necessarily comfort, support or some massive boot-like behemoth on which you could clunk along for 6 hours.

Since those days running shoe technology has just about kept pace with the innovation in personal computers. We quickly started abandoning our 'Apple III-e' model sneakers for 'IBM PC's and a couple of decades later we were running on the shoe equivalent of modern-day computers, marvels of high tech - and priced accordingly. In the process we lost touch with 'real' running, adopting bad habits such as heel striking due to the support & shock absorption delivered by sorbothane and dozens of similar impact absorbing materials.

Running barefoot (or practically barefoot in a pair of Vibrams), pretty much forces one back into a more natural posture, which is on the balls of the feet, employing the body's built-in shock absorbers including the toes, the foot arch, the ankle, the many other foot muscles & tendons, the achilles tendon, calf muscles, the knee and so on...

Of course, how my feet and legs will respond to longer distances in the Vibrams or totally barefoot (which is the long term goal) remains to be seen. So far, so good.