My wife, the girls, and the dog left on Saturday for a combination sleep-away-camp drop-off and visiting friends in New England.  So I’m home alone for the week.  Well actually it’s Frisky the cat, Bob the parakeet, Jasmine the goldfish, and me living the bachelor life through Saturday.  I may be a fairly pathetic bachelor, but my plan was to take advantage of the extra free time to get some extra work done and workout every night at my leisure.

As a little background, having dinner with and reading to my girls at night are my favorite things to do, but combined, they take a couple of hours.  By the time we’re done, it’s usually 9 pm, which is just too late for me to go to the gym.  The only way I can consistently find time to exercise is to get up at 5 am and run on the treadmill.  If I don’t schedule it and get it out of the way early, it just never seems to happen.  So this week, with the newfound free time, I planned to sleep a little later and get a good 90 minutes at the gym every night.  Well, “the best laid plans” and all that… Let’s review how I have done so far:

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I love my new classes approach to working out. I continue to really enjoy the variety that taking classes offers me, and I am starting to see and feel the benefits of varying my workout.

I try to find variety in two different ways. First, I try to get a couple of ‘mixed’ classes in each week. As opposed to jumping on a piece of cardio equipment for 40 minutes or so and following that with 15-30 minutes of weight training, I find it so much more efficient to combine to the two in a class. Most gyms have these types of classes that mix cardio and strength training; they’re incredibly challenging and very efficient. I’m typically out of the gym in 45 minutes!

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A belated happy “Embrace Your Inner Geekness Day” everybody.  No lie, it was yesterday.  Having spent most of my teen years trying to get anyone to embrace my outer geek, the holiday seems to have come about 30 years too late for me.

I celebrated by playing Dance Dance Revolution on the Wii with my oldest daughter and running on the treadmill while watching the MLB All-Star Game.  It reminded me that, for the vast majority of us, the real value of technology in fitness is not in its ability to give us a ‘better’ workout (though it can) but rather in that it helps us forget we’re actually doing exercise. A very small percentage of the population actually enjoys exercise.  The rest of us do it for what it does for us and look for ways to make it more bearable.

My daughter has always been much more enamored with music and drama than team sports; but turn on the Wii, and she’ll happily dance for an hour.  For me, it’s a struggle to get up and run every day, and the most reliable variable for how long I can go is my entertainment option.  I’m at my best when I’m running with a group (see Dirty Nerd post from last month).  However, when that’s not available to me, the length of my session is almost entirely dependent on what’s on:

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Before you head off to the shore or your next cookout, take a few to catch up with the week’s health news:

Just in time for Independence Day, a new state-by-state report details how obesity “threatens America’s future.” Use the interactive map to see how your state weighs in or read the Executive Summary. (Trust for America’s Health)

The recent report on how obese kids threaten our military’s future finally made it to the Sunday funnies. (Doonesbury.com) Just don’t be surprised if those kids’ parents don’t see a problem. (Livescience)

So what happens if we’re too out of shape to outrun the zombie apocalypse? ZombieFit uses parkour to make sure that doesn’t happen. (Chicago Tribune)

Another way to stay fit: biking. Just 5 minutes a day could make the difference for women. (Health.com)

The L.A. Times business pages support a junk food tax. The L.A. Times blog has other ideas.

And just in time for the holiday weekend, some summer-safety news: how cold water can save a life. (Washington Post)

Wishing you a safe and fun holiday weekend!

Each July, we’re reminded that all Americans have the Right to the Pursuit of Happiness. And this July, our GO newsletter shares some great ways to pursue your happiness more effectively.

GO’s “Happy Issue” has a wealth of tips and strategies to keep you smiling. GO lets you know how some simple lifestyle changes can improve depression and calm anger, and what to expect from your first yoga class, so you can be well prepared to ‘zen out.’

If following your bliss often leads you to food, then find out how to eat to improve your mood; plus, get a quick and easy recipe for whole-food muffins that make delicious energy-boosters, courtesy of our friends at EatingWell.

And along with our regular listing of charity fitness events, you’ll find some surprising ways that running and other training regimens can bring happiness. After all, no one said you wouldn’t break a sweat pursuing it!

As we get settled into our new digs, we found some helpful links, plus one controversy that seems to be just beginning.

A government task force issued new recommendations that women in their 40s skip routine mammograms and even self-exams. (Annals of Internal Medicine) Dissent rose quickly from the American Cancer Society, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and most sternly from the American College of Radiology, which argued that the new recommendations would “result in countless unnecessary breast cancer deaths each year.”

In lighter news, here are a few more healthy side dishes for your Thanksgiving table, including a promising variation on a traditional Irish colcannon. (New York Times)

Additional healthy fall recipes can be found at the Meat-Free Mondays site. It’s the brainchild of Sir Paul McCartney, who’s been carrying on the vegetarian legacy of his late wife, Linda, to help fight climate change and global hunger.

Want other ways to stay fit and help the planet? Try some high-performance athletic wear made from recycled material. (Atayne) Or participate in a green marathon or 5K that’s run with less paper, more recycling and other sustainable practices. (FitPlanet)

Lastly, delicious new research found what chocophiles already knew: dark chocolate fights stress. (WebMD, or check out the official abstract from the Journal of Proteome Research)

The four-mile run you last read about felt pretty good … until the next day. “Ankle impingement” says a physical therapist friend of mine. It turns out that when you wreak havoc on your ankles playing tennis, rugby, and hockey, and you repeatedly sprain your ankle, the ligaments and tendons that you stretched out as though on one of those Scooby Doo-style torture racks stay stretched out for a bit. Leaning forward as I was – too much so as I learned – trying to be the perfect chi runner, things somewhere between skin and bone quite literally got pinched and flared up.

The good news is that I think I’m past the back tightening and ankle flaring and have settled into a more natural gate. It all fell into place Saturday on a treadmill as I focused more on landing mid-foot and let that automatically place my body into proper alignment. Now, maybe all the rigid, back-spasm-inducing tilting of my pelvic area did help, but if it’s as simple as focusing on how your foot falls and I could have avoided feeling like an old man after every run, then I wish someone would have told me sooner. Thanks for the heads up.

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Sunday, the best day of the week. The Eagles just manhandled the Chiefs, so I’m a happy camper.  Half-time of the second games seems like the perfect time to test-drive my Vibrams.  Taking the advice of experts, I set out for a one-mile run through my neighborhood.  Sliding them on and strapping them up is not the easiest of tasks.  My toes don’t want to cooperate, and my disfigured big toe on my left foot sticks out rather than fitting into the rubber tip; poor little guy is the victim of a full-speed collision with an outfield wall.

On the unforgiving concrete of Philadelphia, it takes about eight seconds to confirm my suspicion that some changes need to be made to normal running style.  Most runners (me included) land heel first, but in these shoes, heel strikes send pain signals through the legs up to the spine.  Thankfully, I’m prepared for this.  I’ve done my homework on something called “chi running,” and by homework, I mean I watched a one-minute clip online.  Yup, I’m gonna find my center; connect with my inner self one stride at a time.  I bend my knees a bit, maneuver my pelvis forward engaging my abs, get my shoulders, hips, and ankles in line, and lean forward from my ankles not my waist.  This is a lot to keep track of; I have absolutely no idea whether I am chi running or contorting myself into an injury waiting to happen.

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Scott models his Vibram FiveFingers

I’m injured, again.  Yup, turns out I have a bone spur, and oh yeah, favoring the foot that plays host to that tiny little bump of unwelcome bone that tears at the surrounding muscles has made my herniated disc very unhappy.  Apparently, I’m not alone.  Experts estimate that roughly eight out of every ten runners will end up on the shelf each year for some period of time with one of the many assorted injuries we inflict upon ourselves with repetitive pavement pounding.

Why are all runners seemingly perpetually hobbled?  That question, coupled with desperation and about five hundred Google search variations, led me to Vibram FiveFingers® footwear.  What they are supposed to do is connect me to our ancient roots when people ran not for sport but for life.  They ran for food, and from becoming food, and they did it (gasp) without expensive sneakers with padding, reflective patches and air shocks.  They did it in bare feet.  Even today, the fastest people on earth — the Tarahumara tribe in Copper Canyon, Mexico — routinely run hundreds of miles without stopping and without padded running shoes, just homemade leather sandals.

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This week, our Wellness Challenge leader, Frank M., hit a new milestone: three million steps! As a reminder, our 26-week goal was just one million, so he’s achieved triple that with three weeks to spare. In commemoration, we’ve asked him to share his thoughts on success and how he earned it:

As anyone who knows me will tell you, I am a person of extremes. A balanced approach to dieting, exercise, shopping, eating, watching Bravo or Lifetime Television for Women (and a few other things that I shan’t list) has remained rather elusive to me during most of my life.

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