The Mayo Clinic defines Kleptomania as:

Kleptomania is the irresistible urge to steal items that you don’t really need and that usually have little value. It’s a serious mental health disorder that can tear your life apart if not treated.

Kleptomania is a type of impulse control disorder — a disorder in which you can’t resist the temptation or drive to perform an act that’s harmful to you or someone else.

I’m about 99% sure that our dog, Rebel the Malinois, is a victim of this disorder. I also think our cat, Hermione, suffers as well, but that’s the topic for another blog post. Ever since the day we brought Rebel home he’s had a fascination for my purse. If I leave it out unattended he’s grabbing it and removing all the contents and surrounding himself with all his “treasures.” I’ve actually purchased a bigger purse so that he won’t be as likely to pick it up and carry it off. My driver’s license has some rather suspicious tooth-marks that make it difficult for the bar codes to be scanned.

This morning I was awoken by DH heading into his closet and shutting the door (he was trying to keep the light from waking me up). I asked him what he was doing… Looking for his wallet he replied. I assumed that it had dropped down between the seats in his truck when he went to work earlier that morning. I asked him if he’d checked there. He replied that he didn’t have his wallet when he left for work that morning… that it had been missing since last night.

Groggy, but knowing that it was important that he find his wallet, I got out of bed and proceeded to help him tear the house and the vehicles apart looking for the “treasure.” When we retraced his steps all his steps from when he got home after dropping me off in Leesburg for Flyball, we came up empty handed. The wallet was no where to be found. I insisted on looking in places other than where he had been, but came up with nothing. Finally, on a whim, I thought we should look in the couch cushions. Steve insisted that he hadn’t sat on the couch, that he sat in the chair while Rebel sat on the couch. Still, I wanted to leave no cushion unturned. After flipping up several cushions there, gleaming in all it’s stainless steel brilliance, was DH’s wallet. Rebel was looking pretty guilty in his crate.

We think that perhaps when DH looked away, Rebel stealthily stole his wallet and hid it in the couch cushions because he thought without his wallet DH would have to stay home and play ball all day with him.

—-

Me & Liz (my sorority sister) after the race!

My overall official time was 41:05.5 and I did “THE Hill” in 9:36! Yay!!

Liz’s mom got one shot of the two of us together after the race… she just posted it on Facebook, so this is the one and only shot of me from my very first 5K!

Up next is the We’ve Got Your Back 5K for Spinal Health Awareness. This one is pretty personal to me, as my father has scoliosis. Doctors are constantly amazed at how active he is based on the amount of curvature and rotation that’s in his spine, but he plays golf and keeps it loose. Now that he’s getting older, he’s had to step up the back exercises to keep everything working the way it should. Your spine is so important… you only have one, and without out… well, I think everyone knows what would happen.

I wasn’t aware this event was going on until just now, so I felt like it was pretty spur of the moment to try to get together a team to run. But I would like to next year, so all my runner friends, just be thinking about it! Of course, if anyone is looking for something to do on May 22nd, feel free to register and come out and run with me! Registration is open at Active.com, and you can go there by clicking here.

If you’d like to sponsor me in this race, you can click the button below to go to

Related Posts

• April 17, 2010 -- Bluemont 5K, Check!
• July 8, 2010 -- Report on the “successful” camping trip
• March 18, 2010 -- [C25K] Slight Setback…
• March 4, 2010 -- It’s all about the Malinois
• February 12, 2010 -- [C25K] Beginning of Week 2

It has officially been forever since I posted. I apologize… life kind of got in the way. But you’ll be happy to know that I’ve been making sure that all those hours that I’ve been away from my computer and away from MyNeChimKi have been spent hitting the treadmill at the gym… well at least some of them!

I am happy to report that I have officially signed up for the 3rd Annual Bluemont Vineyard 5K. You can sign up too if you’re in the Loudoun County area… the more the merrier! And I was jogging along in my training program pretty pleased with myself. The race is April 17th and I would have been scheduled to finish the training program right on time to go out and hit the trail running.

But then something happened…

Number 1: I got sick. My dear dear hubby shared his evil cold germs with me. But honestly, I didn’t let that get me down… I ran anyway. And I learned important lesson #1: if you have a head cold, running can make it better.

Number 2: Virginia Daughters of the American Revolution State Conference happened. If you’ll recall, when I announced that I would be attempting this training program the #2 thing that I thought might trip me up was this conference. In fact, I was so worried about how it would impact my running that I decided to start the whole program a month early. I figured that if I was farther into it, I would less likely (tempted) to quit if I got off schedule. I am officially glad that I did this. I shouldn’t have had any excuse not to run since we were staying at a Marriott conference center and they have a state of the art fitness center. However, yours truly is terribly stupid. I left my Vibram Sprints sitting at home.

I am very embarrassed that I left my shoes behind, especially since I told myself twice not to forget them! I will now blame my momentary lapse of memory on #1 (see above).

Well, I made a valiant effort to keep up the program despite my harrowing schedule as a page at the VADAR state conference. I carved out little snippets of time, scoped out the fitness room, and the very first night I decided there was only one thing to do… do my “barefoot run” barefoot. That’s right, if Vibrams are barefoot running shoes, how different could it possibly be actually running barefoot??

This is where I learned important lesson #2. Barefoot running is very different than running in Vibrams!! Well, I take that back. The motion of barefoot running without shoes is the same as barefoot running with Vibrams. It still felt great. Well, it still felt great for about 15 minutes. But then something happened that I hadn’t counted on, my feet started getting really really hot. And not a good kind of hot. And then I realized that I was only just over halfway through my run (which I was doing poorly at because I had eaten a healthy portion of lobster mac and cheese and had not waited an hour before hitting the gym) that the treadmill belt was really doing a number on my poor unshod feet. I bailed at just over 20 minutes and ran to the locker room where I found that I was beginning to get some pretty significant blisters on the balls of my feet. So apparently true barefoot running requires a bit more hardiness in your sole… something that I had not acquired before trying it. I suffered through the rest of the weekend and decided that I just needed to pick up the pieces the following week.

So here I am today… I should be doing Week 5 – Day 2 (Warmup, Jog 8 min, Walk 5 min, Jog 8 min, Cooldown). I have to say, the 8 minutes scares me. Any words of encouragement are welcome! I’m a little disappointed that I’m now an entire week behind, and I won’t be finishing the program before the race… but I can work with it. And in case your’e following it, my C25K Log is all updated!

Related Posts

• February 12, 2010 -- [C25K] Beginning of Week 2
• February 3, 2010 -- [C25K] I Ran TWO Miles!!!!!
• February 5, 2010 -- Couch to 5K
• February 5, 2010 -- [Material Girl] Feet, the way God intended them
• April 19, 2010 -- Our dog is a Klepto & Other Running News

I considered posting at the end of Week 1, but to be perfectly honest I was embarrassed… disappointed in myself even. With the impending 2nd dose of the region’s “snowpocalpyse” I hurried off to the gym the eve before we were supposed to get dumped on by snow. I was excited. I felt awesome after the first two days of Week 1. But something terrible happened. It sucked.

For some reason I really felt off my game through the whole run. In the middle of run three I got caught up in my headphone cables and my iPhone went flying. I tried to catch it, but no dice. I ended up hitting the stop button because I didn’t know what else to do (silly me, didn’t think to just step on the side rails). When I retrieved my iPhone from the floor (thank goodness I’ve been encasing it in the OtterBox iPhone 3G, 3GS Commuter Cases [3 Pack]) it wasn’t damaged, but when I plugged the headphones back in my running music never came back on. I also didn’t think to pause my #c25k app so I was all off on the run/walk schedule. And then the worst thing happened, about 20 minutes in my chest got really tight and I was afraid I was going to have an asthma attack so I had to take a couple of puffs on my inhaler. Oh the defeat.

So the worst of the worst could happen. I’ve been going great guns and and feeling awesome and then BAM I felt like crap… just like I did when I was younger and trying to run the mile. The only thing that would have made it worse would have been a scary gym teacher barking at me.

Week 2 – Overcoming the Odds

With that awful run closing my Week 1 I was a little more than nervous about Week 2. After all, Week 2 ramps up the running just a tiny bit.

Week 2, Day 1

Brisk five-minute warmup walk. Then alternate 90 seconds of jogging and two minutes of walking for a total of 20 minutes. Five-minute cooldown walk.

I knew that when the going gets tough I have a tendency to tense up and get scared – especially when it comes to exercise. But not today… today I had to triumph. Or at least I had to try.

But I didn’t just try… I made it. And I made it with EASE! The running part was awesome. I’ve been listening to an iTunes genius mix of Nickelback’s “Burn it to the Ground” but I thought for today’s run I needed a change of pace… something inspirational. The only thing it could be today was Black Violin. I had also armed myself with a Belkin Sport Armband Plus to ensure that I didn’t get myself tangled in my own headphones again.

I’d like to say that everything went smoothly, but I wasn’t completely thrilled with the armband (more to come on that later) and my Nike+ sensor essentially crapped out on me. I was hoping that this wasn’t a sign of things to come. And it certainly wasn’t. Black Violin didn’t fail me. I get absolutely consumed by their music. Brandenburg came on in the middle of my first run and I just giggled… out loud! It was so much fun!! And then before I knew it, the voice prompts were telling me that I was halfway finished. And then almost right after the app was telling me that I was about to start my last run… I was heartbroken! I wanted to go longer!! But I stuck to the program because I didn’t want to kill myself just when I was starting to feel great again.

Continuum Transfunctioner of Running?

I’m just totally confused how I could feel so crappy at the end of Week 1 and then feel so fantastic after the first day of Week 2. Kind of feel like Jesse and Chester from Dude Where’s My Car? and my running is the Continuum Transfunctioner – whose mystery is only exceeded by its power.

If anyone has any suggestions about why this anomaly occurs, please feel free to post a comment! I know that to really figure it out I’d have to probably track my sleep, my meals, and all kinds of other factors to determine why I felt crappy one day and not another. But it seems contrary that when you ramp up in your training program that you’d feel better and it would be easier than the level before it…

Related Posts

• March 18, 2010 -- [C25K] Slight Setback…
• May 12, 2010 -- I have joined the club…
• March 19, 2010 -- Can it GET Worse?
• February 5, 2010 -- Couch to 5K
• February 5, 2010 -- [Material Girl] Feet, the way God intended them

Vibram Five Fingers – Nature’s Best Shoes…

Since August I’ve been meaning to write a blog post about Vibram Five Fingers, these relatively new, innovative barefoot running shoes. I have literally had more than one revolutionary experience while wearing them. There are a bunch of new studies coming out that say barefoot running can significantly decrease the possibility for ankle, knee, and hip injuries. The basic premise behind it is that running without all of the cushioning, padding, and extraneous stuff that are often built into running shoes forces your foot to work the way God intended it to (or nature intended it if you’re not into the spiritual stuff). Our lower body is not designed to withstand constant heel strikes while running, which is exactly what traditional running shoes cause your feet to do. Barefoot running, in theory, will allow your feet to work in the completely opposite way, with the ball of the foot striking first and then rolling back to the heel acting as a shock absorber for the rest of your leg.

Some Links…

• Shoeless Joe from Outside.com
• To Run Better, Start by Ditching Your Nikes from Wired.com
• Foot strike patterns and collision forces in habitually barefoot versus shod runners from Nature Journal of Science paid access is required to read the full study
• Barefoot Running at Harvard
• In Running, Is Barefoot Best? from Harvard Magazine
• Daniel E. Lieberman, Professor of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University

Coming from a background in Anthropology I can completely get behind Dr. Lieberman’s theories regarding barefoot running in correlation with human evolution. I just makes sense to me.

The Plunge

I was originally unconvinced that barefoot running could even be an option for me because I have incredibly flat feet. After having been to so many orthopedics and all of them insisting that orthodics were the way to correct my problem (none felt my flat feet or my pronation was bad enough to warrant expensive and painful corrective surgery), I had just given up. I’ve been buying shoes at exorbitant amounts of money that do not in any way shape or form meet the criteria of “cute” for a twenty-something-almost-thirty-year-old-woman. Comfort has been my only objective for the last 10 years.

On a whim I decided to try these Vibram Five Fingers. Actually, I decided after having seen a guy wearing them at our County fair and he didn’t get beaten up. I figured if he can walk around the County fair in these crazy looking shoes, then I should be able to wear them in public and not have too many problems. After a single day of wearing them around I was 100% sold! After a normal day of walking around I usually had pain that was probably 7 out of 10 radiating up my legs and into my lower back and hips. After wearing the Vibrams around I can honestly say that I had ZERO pain. At first I thought that maybe it was a fluke but after continual wear I noticed that my pain had been significantly reduced, if not totally eliminated.

But… that was not one of the two revolutionary moments that I experienced. That was merely an added bonus to make me not want to ship them back despite my DH calling me “Gorilla Feet.”

Revolutionary Vibram Moment #1

I’ve talked previously about flyball, that high-adreneline dog sport that DH and I play. My first Revolutionary Moment wearing my Vibrams came during a flyball tournament. I purchased my first pair (yes, I said first… and yes, I own multiple pairs) right before a flyball tournament this summer. I wanted to test them out at top speed.

I’ve mentioned what the dogs do during flyball, but I’ve never really talked about what the people do. It’s not just a sit back and watch the dog perform it’s “trick”; there’s quite a bit more movement involved. What the human does is quite a lot like running suicides. There’s a quick sprint up the lane after your dog (who runs it quite a bit faster than you do) and then upon reaching the start/finish line there’s a really fast pivot and you run back enticing your dog to chase you back down the lane. Depending on where you release your sprint could be 50+ feet or it could be less than that. The quick pivot has been known to bring down the most agile of flyball handlers, simply because you’re also usually dodging the dog that is coming back the same time you’re running up after your dog. It’s enough to throw just about anyone off balance.

That first flyball touranment I ran in my Vibrams was a life altering experience! The first “real” heat (because you rarely really run in warm-ups) of the first race of the day something miraculous happened. When I ran up and then pivoted to turn and run back my baby toe did something it has never been able to do before… it stabilized my pivot. I was turning on a dime and I felt every single one of my toes do exactly what they were intended to do. I couldn’t believe it! I was faster, more agile, more stable, and my feet were actually working for me. Suddenly I felt sorry for people that didn’t have all of their toes because all of mine were doing something to help me make that sharp pivot turn.

I have since tried to get Vibram Five Fingers to be our official club shoe. Sadly I have not convinced everyone.

Revolutionary Moment #2

Revolutionary Moment #2 came just the other night when I started my C25K program. Of course, I’ve done tons of reading that says that when you run in barefoot technology shoes that you naturally revert to the rolling motion that your foot should do, rather than striking on your heel. But I’ve been running (or trying to run since I’ve never really succeeded before) for nearly 30 years now. Heel-Toe is just the way it’s done, right?

Wrong.

Not in the Vibrams. Suddenly, I was running in a natural gait that felt wonderful. It wasn’t jarring, it didn’t feel like I was going to shake my head loose and my feet felt awesome! I truly never want to run in any other shoes ever again. Never never never again.

So… you want a pair now, don’t you?

There’s lots of places on the internet that carry Vibram Five Fingers. Among them, I’ve ordered pairs from REI and Kayak Shed. If you’re in the Washington, D.C. metro area and you want to try a pair ON, you can head over to downtown Frederick, MD to The Trail House. A woman in my yoga class purchased hers from there and was very pleased with her experience; I have yet to go up there but I plan to in the next couple of weeks.

A little note about the sizing. A lot of online sites try to “make” the Vibram Five Finger sizing fit to US or Euro sizes. And frankly, it just doesn’t translate. They use a modified version of the sizing based on how long your foot is, measured from heel to your longest toe. I highly recommend you checking out their sizing instructions on their site before you order a pair.

Click the pictures below to see them full size

At the moment I own a pair of Classics, Sprints, and Peformas (which I kind of wish I had ordered in something other than black). To be quite honest, I’m not enamoured of the Classics. They have a drawstring elastic that runs through the shoe and tightens at the back on your Achilles tendon. To me, it pinches and digs in no matter how I adjust it. Just not comfortable. Surprisingly, I haven’t noticed the Performas doing this, even though they’re the same shoe basically, just in leather. But right now, my very favorite pair are my Sprints. They’re not a lot to look at, but they’re the most comfortable and I’m able to get the best fit because of the different velcro straps across the arch and at the heel. If I had to recommend a pair, I’d say get the Sprints. I’m hoping to get a pair of either KSOs or Flows to wear this summer when we go canoeing. But what I’d really love is for Vibrams to come out with a pair of KSO Treks for women.

I was very disappointed that their new line did not include a women’s version of that style. I’d love to wear them hiking because I like the idea of having the added balance with all your toes working for you, but I’m pretty sure that the soles of the regular Vibrams wouldn’t be enough to protect my feet from any pokey-outy (yes that’s a technical term) rocks that might be on the trail. I’m hoping that they’ll see how great they are and then put out a women’s version of the Treks soon!

I have not been compensated, nor will be, in any way by Vibrams or their affiliates. I was not instructed to review this product in a postive light. All observations are my own. I am not an affiliate of the Vibram company and do not receive any compensation for click-through links contained in this specific post.

Related Posts

• March 19, 2010 -- Can it GET Worse?
• March 18, 2010 -- [C25K] Slight Setback…
• February 12, 2010 -- [C25K] Beginning of Week 2
• July 2, 2010 -- Race to the ONYX!
• June 25, 2010 -- Potential for ONYX & no Hyenas

I feel…. FANTASTIC!

After some serious thinking about this C25K program I got really scared that if I started on March 1st I was nearly positive that I’d fail… quit… or otherwise completely flop. So, I decided the best thing to do is start early; it’s now or never. So, if not March 1st I wanted to start on February 1st. The only problem was, by the time I got to the gym it was closed.

So I got more and more anxious. I’ve never really run a day in my life. I was always the last kid on the track when we had to do the mile for the Presidential Fitness Test. And by last kid on the track, I don’t mean that I got to watch the other kids play Four Square… I mean that I was the last kid on the track and everyone else had already gone back in to class and it was just me and the gym teacher telling me to pick it up. But my exercise-induced asthma always flared up when I tried to run. Running a mile has always seemed like an incredible feat.

Tonight I ran TWO miles

Yes folks, that’s right… yours truly ran not one, but two miles! And I feel fantastic. After 17 minutes one mile had passed and then before I knew it, two miles… TWO miles!

I am so psyched after Week 1, Day 1 that I cannot wait until my next run. I cannot believe that I feel so free. I completed tonight’s workout in my Vibram Five Finger Sprints, and my feet felt fantastic. However, the Vibrams are so awesome that they really require a whole post all to themselves, so watch for that soon!!

Related Posts

• March 18, 2010 -- [C25K] Slight Setback…
• February 12, 2010 -- [C25K] Beginning of Week 2
• February 5, 2010 -- Couch to 5K
• April 19, 2010 -- Our dog is a Klepto & Other Running News
• April 17, 2010 -- Bluemont 5K, Check!