Runner

VATICAN CITY - The preliminaries over, Catholic cardinals are ready to get down to the real business of choosing a pope. And even without a front-runner, there are indications they will go into the conclave Tuesday with a good idea of their top picks. Then it will be just a matter of agreeing on one man to lead the church and tackle its many problems. The conclave date was set Friday during a vote by the College of Cardinals, who have been meeting all week to discuss the church's problems and priorities, and the qualities the successor to Pope Benedict XVI must possess.

I think it is down to three players for Big 5 Player of the Year. Providentially, all of them will be on the court Thursday night at the Liacouras Center in the final City Series game of the season, one that will decide whether the title is shared or won outright. My three players are Ramon Galloway and Tyreek Duren (La Salle) and Khalif Wyatt (Temple). A very good case can be made for any of them. Wyatt is probably the favorite as we head into the final weeks of the season, but much can still happen.

PRETORIA, South Africa - Paralympic superstar Oscar Pistorius was charged Thursday with the murder of his girlfriend who was shot inside his home in South Africa, a stunning development in the life of a national hero known as the Blade Runner for his high-tech artificial legs. Reeva Steenkamp, a model who spoke out on Twitter against rape and abuse of women, was shot four times in the predawn hours in the house, in a gated community in the capital, Pretoria, police said. Hours later after undergoing police questioning, Pistorius left a police station accompanied by officers.

NEW ORLEANS - When Wilbert Montgomery ran for 194 yards against the Cowboys in the 1980 NFC championship game, few remember that his backup, Leroy Harris, had a pretty good game, too. Harris rushed for 60 yards on 10 carries and scored the Eagles second touchdown when he lumbered for 12 yards in the third quarter. Montgomery's scintillating 42-yard burst to open the scoring on that frigid Philadelphia day will always be remembered as a peak moment in the franchise's history. But Harris played an important part in getting the Eagles to their first Super Bowl.

The United States team, including Olympic 100-meter hurdler Lolo Jones , won gold Sunday in the combined bobsled-skeleton team event at the world championships in St. Moritz, Switzerland. Jones was brakewoman for Elana Meyers in the women's bobsled portion of an event that also added times in two-man bobsled plus men's and women's skeleton. The U.S. team edged Germany by 0.24 seconds even though the Germans won three of four disciplines on the Olympia track. Skeleton racer Noelle Pikus-Pace was 1.7 seconds faster than German rival Marion Thees to lead the United States to victory with an overall time of 4 minutes, 31.29 seconds.

Q: I'm only 25, but since I started running outdoors I have been experiencing knee pain. I currently need to lose about 30 pounds. Should I continue running? Will the pain eventually go away? - Lauren Smith A: First, you should get to your doctor to be sure you do not have any underlying orthopedic problems. If you don't, it's likely that running is just too much stress on your body. (Even the most svelte runners tend to develop knee problems eventually.) A walking program can be just as effective without causing any strain on your legs.

For three years, Kinzey Lynch has been a key member of the Perkiomen Valley High School cross-country team. He's run through the woods, over trails, and on courses that intersect busy streets with a personal record of 22 minutes, 48 seconds. This might not seem too extraordinary for a cross-country runner, except that Lynch, 17, is legally blind. He was born with two conditions that combined to severely limit vision in his left eye, and leave him seeing just colors and distances from his right.

If you made a New Year's resolution to run a 5k, and you're a Phillies fan, your hometown baseball team has a race for you to consider: the Phillies Charities 5k, which will be run March 23. Registration opens Monday at 9 a.m. at Phillies.com. The race is expected to sell out within 24 hours, so be quick to get to your browser. "We knew they were there," Mary Ann Moyer said of running Phillies fans. She's manager of marketing initiatives for the Phillies and had kicked around the idea of holding a 5k for years.

Before we close the books on another exhilarating/frustrating/awesome/humiliating (circle one) fantasy season, let's take a quick stroll back through 2012 to examine the players we rooted for and against and - with as much objectivity as we can muster - give credit where credit is due. As always, our annual accolades (and condemnations) have but a few important criteria: 1. Consistency on a weekly basis is next to godliness. 2. Production during the fantasy playoffs - for our purposes, NFL weeks 14 through 16 - is given extra weight.

Andy Leshik first saw it at a fitness expo: a man riding around the showroom floor, standing up, on what looked like an oversize scooter. "I had to see what it was," said Leshik, director of sales and marketing of Leisure Fitness in Newark, Del. That was 2008, and now you can see that thing - an ElliptiGO - zipping through Fairmount Park. It's becoming an option for runners who want to continue training while injured, or who don't want to pound the pavement as often anymore. The ElliptiGO is an elliptical machine on wheels.