Treadmill

British-based physiologist Adar Pelah would never have thought of his latest experiment if he had not felt the need to get more exercise and picked up a treadmill at Sears during a recent trip to the United States. "I observed this funny sensation after getting off of it," says Pelah, who works at Cambridge University in England. It was an effect familiar to thousands of experienced treadmill runners - walking on the ground felt much faster than it really was. The feeling is like walking on one of the horizontal escalators found at airports.

Suddenly, India seemed to glide by instead of assaulting our senses. It is a country that invades the imagination beyond anything you conjure watching those Discovery Channel moments showing people hanging onto the sides of buses, cows walking the streets, fabled temples carved into the sides of mountains. What we learned was how to relax on vacation. I believe the lesson can be applied to every intense vacation any of us will ever take. So many times we had roared through countries - Turkey, Thailand, China, South Africa, even benign Costa Rica - and had come home, flopped on the bed, and waited for jet lag to pass.

If you haven't had a heart-to-heart lately with that set of auricles and ventricles inside your left side, it may be time for a stress test. The stress test, otherwise known as an exercise cardiogram, is the safest and most painless procedure for determining whether your heart is pumping properly. You merely have your chest hooked up to a sophisticated electrocardiogram machine (by means of electrode patches in 12 strategic places) and walk on a treadmill that speeds up and goes on a greater incline at regular intervals.

Fitness experts are always telling us that incorporating movement into our day is a good way to burn calories. But is it effective? A study finds that walking in place during commercials while watching TV actually provides a pretty good workout. Researchers from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville studied a group of 23 men and women ages 18 to 65 under a number of conditions to see how many calories they burned. The study participants also represented a wide range of weights, from normal to obese.

The dog's in the running. Jim Sexton of Tabernacle prepares his pug for the Burlington County Kennel Club's winter show, which is tomorrow at the South Jersey Expo Center. The 2-year-old pug trots on the treadmill for 10 minutes every day to help build muscle tone.

It must have really hit me when Pete Maravich died in January. The guy was a Hall of Fame basketball player and here he drops dead at age 40 on a basketball court. Of course, Maravich had a rare heart ailment that led to his death. Still, it was still enough to scare the bejeebers out of even those of us who consider ourselves in good shape, but see the tunnel of middle age not far up the tracks. That day the pain in my chest started getting more bothersome. I thought it was just a bruise from a stray elbow in my own thrice-weekly pickup basketball game.

NFL career rushing leader Emmitt Smith has a broken left shoulder blade and will be sidelined indefinitely. The injury occurred early in the second quarter of Arizona's 24-7 loss to Dallas on Sunday in Smith's first game against the team with which he played his first 13 seasons and helped lead to three Super Bowl victories. Arizona coach Dave McGinnis said X-rays taken yesterday revealed the injury was more serious than originally thought. After the game, the Cardinals said Smith had only a sprained shoulder.

The Inquirer is presenting a daily profile of participants in the May 6 Blue Cross Broad Street Run, considered the country's most popular 10-miler, with 40,000 people. See full coverage at www.philly.com/broadstreetrun . Kate Zalesky, 25, was never an athlete. She was the girl in high school who dreaded the annual day in gym when she had to run a timed mile. She was the kid running a 15-minute mile and dying by the end. She was the typical video-game and book nerd.

The room smelled like burning tires. Smoke billowed. My daughter ran out gasping. And so our treadmill eked out its last mile and created its own funeral pyre. Let this be a lesson to those of you contemplating a home gym (who isn't this time of year?): Owning fitness equipment means maintaining more than your weight. But it still beats going to a gym, for many reasons. First, health clubs have people. People who can see you. The fact that you have to haul your lard rump to the gym probably means you're not thrilled about pulling on a pair of shorts or something spandex and shaking what your mama gave you (and then some)

If Frank Messina had to run a mile through his Warminster neighborhood to stay in shape, he might have chosen flab over fitness. Messina, 64, prefers to exercise indoors in the company of friends. As he trotted a quick mile on the treadmill one Friday, he took some ribbing from Martin Galinsky, who was strolling leisurely on the treadmill next to him. Galinsky, who admitted being older than Messina but wouldn't say precisely how much older, needled his friend. "I tell everybody he's older than me," Galinsky said without getting the expected rise from his trim and well-toned treadmill mate.

The Inquirer is presenting a daily profile of participants in the May 6 Blue Cross Broad Street Run, considered the country's most popular 10-miler, with 40,000 people. See full coverage at www.philly.com/broadstreetrun . Kate Zalesky, 25, was never an athlete. She was the girl in high school who dreaded the annual day in gym when she had to run a timed mile. She was the kid running a 15-minute mile and dying by the end. She was the typical video-game and book nerd.

Fitness experts are always telling us that incorporating movement into our day is a good way to burn calories. But is it effective? A study finds that walking in place during commercials while watching TV actually provides a pretty good workout. Researchers from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville studied a group of 23 men and women ages 18 to 65 under a number of conditions to see how many calories they burned. The study participants also represented a wide range of weights, from normal to obese.

HARRISBURG - A little more than a year ago, Gov. Rendell weighed a chart-busting 267 pounds. He would down a 22-ounce steak in 11 minutes and curl up with a half-gallon of ice cream before bed. Today, Rendell tips the scales at a svelte 205. For a man known as much throughout Pennsylvania for his supersize appetite as for his oversize personality, Rendell says he still enjoys a few scoops of ice cream and a good rib eye. But now he...

John Daly's suspension from the PGA Tour is over, and the two-time major champion plans to return for the St. Jude Championship on June 11-14 in Memphis near his home. He said he received a sponsor's exemption for the tournament along with one for the Buick Open in July. Daly, 43, was suspended for six months in November after a series of off-course incidents that brought negative publicity to the PGA. In October, he spent a night in jail to get sober in Winston-Salem, N.C., and a photo of him in an orange jail jumpsuit caused a stir on the Internet.

Suddenly, India seemed to glide by instead of assaulting our senses. It is a country that invades the imagination beyond anything you conjure watching those Discovery Channel moments showing people hanging onto the sides of buses, cows walking the streets, fabled temples carved into the sides of mountains. What we learned was how to relax on vacation. I believe the lesson can be applied to every intense vacation any of us will ever take. So many times we had roared through countries - Turkey, Thailand, China, South Africa, even benign Costa Rica - and had come home, flopped on the bed, and waited for jet lag to pass.

The room smelled like burning tires. Smoke billowed. My daughter ran out gasping. And so our treadmill eked out its last mile and created its own funeral pyre. Let this be a lesson to those of you contemplating a home gym (who isn't this time of year?): Owning fitness equipment means maintaining more than your weight. But it still beats going to a gym, for many reasons. First, health clubs have people. People who can see you. The fact that you have to haul your lard rump to the gym probably means you're not thrilled about pulling on a pair of shorts or something spandex and shaking what your mama gave you (and then some)

Today ends the cruelest month for teens with dreams. April is when the last of the slim envelopes embossed with college seals arrive in high-school seniors' mailboxes, spawning squeals of delight or humiliated tears. The college admissions race is a perverse, exploitative frenzy whose poisons seep ever deeper into middle-class childhood. Yet many parents equate immersion in the frenzy with doing right by their kids, rather than doing something very wrong to them. Americans love lists; here's a list of 10 Things to Hate About College Admissions: 1. The process is driven by a list.

NFL career rushing leader Emmitt Smith has a broken left shoulder blade and will be sidelined indefinitely. The injury occurred early in the second quarter of Arizona's 24-7 loss to Dallas on Sunday in Smith's first game against the team with which he played his first 13 seasons and helped lead to three Super Bowl victories. Arizona coach Dave McGinnis said X-rays taken yesterday revealed the injury was more serious than originally thought. After the game, the Cardinals said Smith had only a sprained shoulder.

Older folks, muscular women, thrill-seeking kids. These are the soldiers of a revolution in physical fitness who have thrown down rackets and balls and taken to exercising on mechanical contraptions at homes and health clubs. The change has been fueled by a variety of factors, including: Americans' heightened awareness that they need exercise - and have less time to "just do it. " Elderly people's flooding onto Fitness Beach, as doctors extol the benefits of activity and strength training.

Dora McCollum tossed a towel over her shoulder and placed her hands on her aerobicized hips. She watched, incredulously, as Clinton stumbled over his words. The poor thing. He was probably set up, framed and bamboozled, McCollum said. Why else would that makeup-caked coed recall each rendezvous in excruciating detail, or preserve a semen-stained dress? "We wash our bodies, we wash our clothes, am I wrong? Something's not right here," said McCollum, wagging her finger and raising her voice yesterday afternoon over the thump of aerobics music at the Lady Fitness Center in South Philly.