I go through this at least once a year. For a variety of reasons, I decide I need to make changes to my workout regimen.

Currently, I walk for about half an hour between two and five times a week. Everything depends on the weather and my schedule. I also have an old exercise bike in the basement I will ride on occasion, especially when in the winter.

But I can never seem to leave well enough alone. That’s how I ended up at a few stores last week looking for new running shoes.

I did need to get a new pair of shoes for exercise regardless of whether I wanted to add running back into my schedule, but I figured if I was going to put a crowbar in my wallet for the new kicks, I might as well really put them to use.

The problem is that, thanks to my many years of wrestling, I have pretty bad knees and ankles. This means that whenever I start this running kick, I’m really just on an inevitable path of giving up running because my legs just can’t take the pain anymore.

So when I went shoe shopping, I had to balance my natural cheapness with the need to find a pair of shoes which might make the torture of running a little less painful. Since I’m not a big runner, I didn’t know exactly what kind of shoe I wanted. I did, however, know exactly what kind of shoe I did not want – five-finger shoes.

These goofy-looking things popped up a few years ago. They are called the “barefoot alternative” and look like gloves for your feet. Apparently, they help you run better. I guess that’s supposed to help you overcome looking completely stupid.

Five-finger shoes would have never crept into my mind while looking for running shoes under normal circumstances, but I have recently heard stories of people wearing them in everyday circumstances.

Unless we all have some need now to climb through trees to guarantee our survival as a people, I can’t understand why we can’t get along with sticking our toes in normal shoes.

A New York comedian posted a photo online this week of a guy wearing a pair of these shoes while riding the subway. Now I know that you should expect weird things when in the city, but the person looked like they were wearing dress pants.

If you get dressed for work with the intention of looking professional, how can you honestly grab a pair of foot gloves and not realize how incredibly moronic you will look with them on?

As a society, we have unfortunately allowed some very unfortunate fashion trends to proliferate – popped collars, jean shorts on men, Ed Hardy shirts. We can’t let people think that the foot glove deserves a chance to succeed.

I tried to do my small part by buying normal shoes. If everyone of us contributes a little to this effort, maybe the people who wear these kind of shoes will see the error of their ways.

Then again, a portion of the population hasn’t realized that the bill of a baseball cap is supposed to face forward so I might be expecting too much.