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Losing Weight with Vibram FiveFingers – Part 4

by Steven Shipowitz » on Apr 14, 2011 1

This is part 4 in a mini-series by Steve Shipowitz (@stevenship) on his endeavor to lose weight, which led him to discovering ‘Born to Run‘ and Vibram FiveFingers.  You can read part 1 of the series here, part 2 here, and part 3 here.

When last we left, I was laying on the side of the road reeling in pain from what I thought was a broken leg. Fortunately it was not. I was still heel striking during my running and landed squarely on a tiny pebble, which sent the pain coursing through my body. If this doesn’t get you to learn to run with a mid-sole strike, nothing will. I had been looking at the bottoms of my VFFs and noticed that I was wearing down the heels very quickly. I had been doing my running exclusively on the street.  I was able to hobble home after the attack pebble incident and was out running again within a couple of days.

Fast forward to mid-October and I am consistently running more than a mile at a time without much effort. Here’s the problem with my goals and me, I like to conquer them sooner than later. I am now pushing 2 miles per run and I am feeling fine. Running is now a part of my weight loss solution and a part of my life. I am, for lack of a better term, addicted. I have a business acquaintance who is an avid marathoner and she has been very supportive of my new venture. She has said she will run with me in my first 5K as soon as I am ready. I am thinking, no way, this girl does marathons and all night running events much like the Hood to Coast race. (As an aside, if you get a chance to see the Hood to Coast movie, I highly recommend it.) Anyway, I see that there is a race coming up on November 14 called the Gobble Wobble. I make the decision, I am going to go for it, but I am not really going to tell many people. For some reason I am scared to race. Come on, I’ve played sports in front of very large crowds, spoken to groups of hundreds of people, have even appeared on television a few times, what am I afraid of? I guess I was afraid of failing, and failing to me was not being able to finish the race. I would later find out that this was an irrational fear.

If you are wondering how I know all of these dates and distances, I used Nike+ to track all of my running. It is a great website and I am fan of the Nike+ system. I use my Apple iPod nano in conjunction with the Nike+ sensor that is wrapped around the Bikila’s strap. You can clearly see it in the picture from my second installment of this series.

It’s now the end of October and I have lost almost 26 pounds. The VFFs are completely broke in. I no longer have to force my pinky toe into its slot and I just love the VFFs. I am sticking to the South Beach Diet, I have completely changed my eating habits and I am as healthy as I have ever been. The race is just a couple of weeks away…

Next….Runners take your marks…

 

1 Comment

  1. Dan says:

    That’s awesome.. I could use to loose a few pounds. My wife swears by the South beach diet.

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