My journal about my week 2 with the couch to 5k program – a training schedule designed to help you work up gradually to running a 5k marathon. You can read my notes on week 1 here. These are my two week results including feeling more energetic and how I am keeping motivated.

You can read my week 1 plan and goal here.

Week two went as well as week 1 for me. One difference I’ve noticed is I have had a few nights where I wake up at 3am and can’t get back to sleep.

Overall, I feel like I am sleeping lighter. So, my normally groggy mornings are still groggy. But I am hoping once I get into the full 5k mode, I will not have this problem.

My wife reports she is feeling better physically. But that the increase in running time wasn’t as easy for her as it was me.

I normally wear Vibram 5 fingers for jogging and walking. But due to the cold I put on running shoes one day. This made my run much more difficult.

My wife usually opts for running shoes. On the days she wears Vibrams, she keeps a better pace. Which makes me wonder if running shoes actually hurt performance long term. They certainly do for me at least in the early stages.

Motivation has remained. Though, some days I am just plain exhausted. Luckily, it hasn’t been enough to throw us off track.

Taking our time

Toward the end of week 2 we weren’t feeling as gung ho as in the beginning. This is natural. So what I said is we’re just going to go at our own pace. We don’t need to rush or strain. We can extend the week two plan into week 3.

Who cares how long it takes if we reach the same destination?

So we ended up running the week 2 plan 5 times instead of 3 with rest days in between. So the actual week 2 plan took us almost 2 weeks.

On to week 3….

Think you are walking enough to keep fit? Recent studies may surprise you. They certainly raised my eyebrows.

It’s a great time to be alive.

With technology advances things as simple as counting steps can become automatic and give you instant feedback.

My son showed me his latest Nintendo DS toy called Nintendo Personal trainer walking. It includes a pedometer you wear all day. Then you sync with the nintendo for tracking In it are charts, games, suggestions and feedback for improvement.

I was fascinated to see all the features – designed especially for kids. But at one point he asked “how many steps should kids take each day?”. Ahh. Good question. So I looked it up and stumbled on some fascinating numbers.

According to new pedometer steps recommendations from Dr. Catrine Tudor-Locke, 10,000 steps is the ideal number. 5,000 or less means you are leading a ‘seditary’ lifestyle. And 12,500 being optimum.

Woah! My son’s meager 4,000 steps per day average in the last week was a wake up call for both of us. I’ve never thought of him as being ‘seditary’, but even he feels he needs more exercise – even before we looked up the numbers.

I’ve never tracked my own steps, but average 6-7 miles per week of extra steps due to excercise. I’ve done that consistently for over 20 years.

But maybe it’s time I track them because even with additional mileage I may be well under the 12,500 optimum.

Like the old saying goes; You don’t know what you don’t know until you know it…

– Brad Isaac

You’ve had a hard day’s work. You want to just sit back and decompress. What’s your choice for unwinding?

Do you pick up your hobby tools and get crafty? Or do you reach for the booze?

I’ve talked about my woodworking for several years here on the blog. I find it incredibly relaxing.

I am a non drinker – more on this later.
But since it’s your choice on how you spend your time, it’s up to you. But I’d recommend woodworking over the bottle. And here are ten reasons why:

1. Woodworking is exercising without exercising
2. Woodworking improves dexterity drinking improves clumseyness
3. Woodworking produces wonderful gifts drinking produces horrible gifts – vomit anyone?
4. You can drive after woodworking
5. Woodworking can’t result in jail time
6. You can learn a new skill while woodworking
7. Woodworking frees the mind and optimizes creative solutions
8. Woodworking doesn’t cause liver damage
9. You can make money with the products of your woodwork
10. Although equally addictive, quitting carving doesn’t involve rehab, meetings, or withdrawl

In this post you will discover the ‘mental’ side of improving your vision. If you read no other posts in this series, make sure this is the one.

This is the second post In the series how to correct your eyesight without LASIK. But if you haven’t read the first part, please go back and read it before continuing:

Vision Correction Without Lasik: Exercise Your Eyes

After reading my background, I am sure you can relate to many of my experiences as a nearsighted person. You may have felt odd about having to wear glasses as a kid or felt pain of getting pollen under a contact lens. For these reasons repairing our vision is not only desirable, it can relieve pain.  Plus better vision has the potential to open new opportunities.

Like any good runner would stretch before a 5k, you too need a warm up. Before we get into the specific exercises we need to cover some background principles you must understand before you get into vision training.

Principle #1: Relax and See

The most important of these principles is relax and be easy. We think of the word exercise and we think strain. We think lifting or running until we are breathless. But with eye exercises you must never push of strain.

Principle #2: Vision (bad or good) is not a constant

Your eyesight changes constantly. Chart it out if you don’t believe me.

Get up early and you might see 10% better than after a big afternoon meal. An afternoon at the pool and you might see 15% better than you do that evening at 8 PM.

Why does our eyesight change so much?

I think when you use something as much as we use our eyes, wear and tear is a normal outcome. Eyes are amazing organs and they are always on. What other sensory organs get as much non-stop use as your eyes?  Wait, don’t answer that.

Simply knowing our eyes perform at varying levels of efficiency can help sustain you through the challenges of this program.

And like muscles, your eyes need rest and recovery.

Dr. Bates argued most myopia was caused by patient anxiety and their resulting physical reaction. To simplify, he postulated that when we are upset or apprehensive we will resist seeing and will compensate by squinting, opening our eyes wider, and straining in order to see.

Unfortunately, these reactions do not make sight better, they make it worse.

Eye anatomy is beyond the scope of this post. However, suffice to say the cornea of the human eye is flexible. Put pressure on the cornea and the curvature increases – thus causing nearsightedness. Allow the eye muscles to relax and operate naturally and the cornea will ‘flatten’ and myopia will decrease.

Obviously, to see clearly, we want our eye muscles to work with us and not against us.

So, as you progress through the lessons, make sure to take it easy and stay relaxed. If you feel yourself stressing or feeling negative, then stop. Take a break and try again later.

I like to repeat a mantra as I do my exercises. I repeat “relax and see, relax and see” as I go through my routine.

Your first exercise

For our first exercise, I want you to get in touch with what is going on with you emotionally with regards to your eyesight.

Warning. Do not shrug off this exercise. It may seem lame to you analytical thinkers. But I strongly encourage you to stick with me. This is the cornerstone of the rest of the series and I think your results will not be as strong if you don’t do it.

With that said, grab a pen and sheet of paper and take off your glasses…

I’d like you to look at an object across the room or in the distance. Stare at it for 5 minutes. Notice the edges of the object. Notice the center. Notice the colors. Notice the blurrinesa.

During these 5 minutes, blink naturally and don’t squint or bulge your eyes. Just look.

While looking, simply notice some of the feelings you experience as you look at the blurry object.

What are some of the feelings that creep into your awareness? List them now.

Do any memories creep into your head? Note them too.

I don’t want to blow the surprise, but I will say when I first did this exercise I was amazed with what I found.

So give this a try and write down your results.

If you feel like sharing your revelations I’d love to hear about them in the comments.

There is plenty more info on vision correction coming don’t miss the next post. Subscribe to my RSS feed to get the next update.

This time of year is especially heinous for my energy level. I have bad allergies to grass pollen and it results in major fatigue.

Fatigue being one of the enemies of persistence, I’ve searched years for a solution. Last week, I found a blog post One Cure for Pollen Allergies where the author, who is it anyway? Said they cured their pollen allergy fatigue by taking supplements of zinc citrate 25mg per day or 50 every other day and a beta carotene supplement.

About a month before another allergy season set in, I started taking a supplement of zinc citrate to strengthen my immune system. Unexpectedly, I had no deep fatigue symptoms when the allergy started and not during the whole allergy season. To be sure, I took the allergy medication several different times and didn’t feel any better….

…Vitamin A is also a core nutrient of the immune system. Using zinc, the body (a.k.a. the cells of the body) turns beta carotene into vitamin A as needed. Taking beta carotene instead of vitamin A prevents you from taking too much vitamin A, which can cause a lot of problems, some of them permanent.

Well, you know me, I’ll try about anything… So I stopped by the health food store and instead of getting just zinc citrate and beta carotene tablets, I searched for a men’s multivitamin that would contain both. The closest I came was Men’s One Energy Multivitamin which contains 20 mg of zinc citrate per capsule. I figured if I got most of the zinc and beta carotene as suggested in the post, the other vitamins might offset the missing 5mg.

Do you know of any secrets to beating allergy fatigue? If so, please share in the comments..

Update: I forgot to post that in the past few days that I’ve been taking the vitamin, that it hasn’t done much if anything for my sinus allergies, but I am more energetic than I was last week.  I don’t have the crushing fatigue that I normally have this time of year which is a relief in itself.  But I will follow up when I know something more definitive.

Courtesy of Rules of Thumb, here are some tips:

• MEASURING DETERGENT Fifty percent of the amount of detergent recommended by the manufacturer is plenty. Ditto toothpaste!
• DYSLEXIA AMONG THE POPULATION About 2 out of every 10 people have dyslexia.
• GETTING RID OF BACK PAIN If your back hurts more when you climb stairs, walk up a hill, or get out of a chair, you need to do extension exercises.
• TIMING YOUR GARAGE SALE Hold a garage sale the first weekend of the month because people who get paid monthly have more money to spend then.
• THROWING OUT CLOTHING – Sometimes when cleaning out your closet you’ll come across a garment that you don’t wear because nothing goes with it. If you aren’t ready to spend any money to make the item work for you, you probably are ready to give it to Goodwill.

I hate to say it, but for all of it’s wonderful attributes, the Aerogarden has one seed kit I don’t like.  The flaw I speak of is their salad greens kit. 

In the beginning, it wasn’t too bad.  The seeds sprouted into small lettuce plants in only 2-3 days.  I was harvesting a leaf or two of delicious lettuce a day within the first 2 weeks.  But then about 4 weeks in, we had an over-abundance of lettuce. 

Now I like lettuce as much as the next guy, but let’s face it.  It’s not the most exciting food in the world.  But having more of it than we’d eat is ok, because the kids have pet turtles who love a leaf or two every couple of days.

What bothered me the most, though is the mess. 

Click for a larger image

The lettuce plants began winding their way around the base of the Aerogarden.  They combated for space with the hidden plants underneath, dying off, wilting, rotting, or otherwise dying.  When a big lettuce leaf falls off where you can’t see it, it dries out.  Then it breaks apart into little crumbs (and in my case) falls onto the desk or the floor underneath the desk. 

It was getting everywhere.  I felt like I was cleaning up lettuce niblets all the time.  The herb kit wasn’t anywhere near this messy.

So, I think for me, the lettuce kit is out unless I combine it with something else.  I could always throw one or two plants in with herbs or something.  But the lettuce tends to get so big, it will choke off smaller plants.

This time, I’ve modded some strawberry plants and have the Aerogarden growing strawberry plants.  If it works as well as it seems to be so far, I’ll post a DIY on how to do strawberries in your Aerogarden.

Sleeping in, resting, lying back feels good until 8 pm Saturday night rolls around and you haven’t gotten your daily workout.

You’ve had all day to do it but… going out to breakfast, sitting on the deck, surfing or watching TV got in the way.  Now it’s late and you feel guilty. 

Your weekend is free time.  Yes, it should be enjoyed.  Can’t you just take off the weekend and enjoy it?  Sure, of course you can.  But then you wouldn’t be reading this if being lazy was what you wanted.

If you feel the way I do when I don’t get in my workouts, then here are 3 of my tips to getting the blood flowing and  your attitude up over the weekend:

1. Exercise is a small commitment in comparison - When you look at the larger scheme of things, how long is your exercise routine?  20 minutes?  1 hour?  When you compare that to the 55 hours that comprise a normal weekend, then the time you spend exercising is tiny in comparison. 
2. Get out early - Especially during these hot summer months, getting out early in the morning can decrease the heat pain. 
3. Hold back the rewards until done - You like TV, going out to eat, surfing?  Hold that back as a reward for exercise.  Forbid yourself from engaging in those activities until you’ve completed your workout.

Read more..

A reader named Brandon emailed me wondering why I hadn’t followed up on my Finn Comfort shoe reviews from a few weeks ago.  He is debating getting a pair for himself and because of the price, he’s still undecided.

Well, I didn’t post because I didn’t want to bore anyone and I also didn’t realize some of you were waiting to see what happened after they broke in.  Sorry – my fault.

So here is the latest…

The shoes have broken in very well as of a few days ago. They are very comfortable for the feel. I still notice some of the pressure points pushing into parts of my foot that I am not used to.  But they aren’t painful or irritating, just a new feeling I am still adjusting to.

Brandon asked me if they were worth the $300 price tag. Well, me being from from meager heritage, I’ve inherited much frugality. So I would feel bad recommending them if they weren’t all they claim to be.

Whether they are worth it is an individual opinion.  If you, like me, have foot, leg or knee pain from ill fitting shoes, how much is it worth to get rid of the pain?  If you take OTC pain medication because of it, that expense adds up over time.  But it would take at least 40 bottles of Tylenol to pay for a pair of Finn Comforts.  And me not being a podiatrist, I can’t really say if they will in fact help you.

I am only speaking as someone who had moderate pain every day as a result of walking in the shoes I used to wear. 

Since I last blogged about them, I’ve put some miles on the Finns…yes MILES.  Last weekend, my son volunteered to help a local animal rescue by walking a cute little dog in a parade.  Unexpectedly, the organizers asked me to accompany the walkers to help look after the smaller kids riding on the float. This troubled me some because I had slipped on the Finns before going to the parade. I had only been wearing the Finns for 5 days… Probably not long enough for a full break in.

I dreaded the possibility of limping in agony and hating the shoes by the end of the parade.  But we had battled traffic, parking and parade organizers  to get where we were.  And the Finns were the only shoes I had.   I didn’t have much of a choice.

So, my family walked the entire parade route… I am guessing 2.5 – 3.0 miles.

At the end of the parade, we stood around and chatted with potential adoptee families and viewed some of the other parade exhibits.

By the end, I had completely forgotten about the shoes until Kim mentioned how much her feet hurt from all that walking. I immediately zeroed in on how my feet were feeling. All I noticed was a slight irritation in my right big toe from my socks rubbing around inside the shoes. This was likely because I didn’t have them tied tight enough.

I have never been one to tie my shoes tightly because It always feels like I am cutting off the circulation to half my foot. Not so in the Finns, when I tie them tightly they feel just fine. And having them snug stops the rubbing around inside the shoe.

So, after a parade, the shoes were feeling wonderful. I would have never been able to walk a parade in Doc Marteens or Birkenstocks.  I would have opted for some running shoes for that distance.  Yet, even with running shoes, I’d expect at least some pain.

Restless Leg Syndrome

Another early benefit appears to be when I am not wearing the shoes. More frequently than I’d like to admit, I get foot cramps and leg restlessness at bedtime. It is very irritating and at times has kept me awake through most of the night. I don’t know if it is restless leg syndrome since I haven’t talked with a doctor about it.  But to me, it’s irritating as hell leg jumpiness syndrome. 

Since starting the Finns, I haven’t had this restless leg (or whatever it is) one time.

Yes, the jury is still out, but I hope it continues.  If these shoes stave off having to take some prescription pill or buy some specialized chair, then they would save money over time.

Less Expensive Alternative?

Now for price, are they worth the price? Here’s what I told Brandon. If there is a pair of shoes you like the style of but they don’t feel that great, consider purchasing the shoes and a quality Orthotic. Quality orthotics run between $20 and $50.  And are best fitted by an expert.  Otherwise, they can slide around or try to fix the wrong problem – thus resulting in not fixing your pain and perhaps creating new pain – definitely not recommended.    

Anyway, I told him to add the price of new shoes plus orthotic. Is the price near the cost of Finn Comforts or much less? If there isn’t much of a difference, the Finns are the way to go. If the prices aren’t even close, you can try the less expensive way. Unfortunately the consideration that you may be losing some of the insole quality and benefit by “rolling your own” might weigh on you.  But that’s possibly worth the risk if you are saving over $100. For me, I did the math and it just didn’t seem to be a good deal.  Plus, curiosity got me too – were they really that good?  So far, I’ll say they are. 

So that’s my 2 week update. I’ll let you know another update when I hit the next milestone.

P.S.  If you decide to buy a pair of Finn Comforts, please consider using my Amazon links above.  Amazon sends me a gift card every month for my referrals.  I’d like to use the next one to get my wife a pair too.