Sun Magazine

It was a 90-degree spring morning in 2011, and I was struggling, my breath coming in gasps. I was on the last leg of a sprint triathlon, the run, and from across the way, I heard the unmistakable booming voice of Shawna. She was the personal trainer/cancer survivor/demon woman who, a full year before, had somehow convinced me that, at age 48, I should take up this wretched sport. "Catherine, watch your posture!" she shouted. How had I gotten myself here? I was willingly subjecting myself to this exercise in agony and humiliation, which was suddenly feeling a lot like junior high P.E. class.

After five years as Baltimore's police commissioner - five years of sleepless nights, crime scenes and news conferences - Frederick H. Bealefeld III was ready to unplug. While Bealefeld scheduled Aug. 1 as his official retirement date, he's spending most of this month burning off vacation by hiking a 300-odd-mile stretch of the Appalachian Trail - solo and almost completely out of pocket. "I really want to be alone," Bealefeld said. "A lot of people want to come with me, but I don't want to have to talk to anyone.

Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown, newly single, was lunching with an old friend. She wanted to know if he was dating. Nope, he said, too busy - why, did she know anyone? Karmen Walker, she suggested. The willowy government relations liaison for Comcast was a familiar face around Annapolis. Brown knew her work, that her husband had been killed in a car accident, that she was a single mother. "No way," Brown said. "She's got to be in a relationship. " If his friend could confirm Walker's availability, Brown agreed to call her. Five minutes after lunch, his phone rang: Confirmed.

Duff Goldman's workouts aren't for the faint of heart. In a regimen designed by his Los Angeles-based trainer David Muller, Goldman splits his time down the middle between cardio and strength training — his passion lies with the muscle stuff. Lately, Goldman says, his gym time isn't just a means to an end. He calls it "church," where he can get away from the white noise of life and concentrate on himself. "It's really working for me," he says. "Whatever this guy's telling me, I'm doing it. " That means getting up early, swigging down vitamins and a protein shake, then slipping on his favorite Ravens jersey and riding to Gold's Gym in Venice on his motorcycle.

Hilary Phelps was approaching the finish line of her first Ironman triathlon. Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run" was playing. She was wrung out from more than 14 hours of swimming, cycling and now running, certain that there wasn't a single drop of liquid left inside her. Then she saw her family, and the tears started flowing as she ran into their arms - mom Debbie, sister Whitney and brother Michael. "I've never done anything this impressive," she remembers Michael saying. "Are you kidding me?"

In the more than 45 years since the Prime Rib opened, precious little has changed at the iconic midtown restaurant. Walking in is like stepping into a bygone era: Well-dressed diners carve into steaks the size of dinner plates while waiters in suits top off their wine glasses. The walls are black with gold trim; on them hang paintings, posters and framed covers of Vogue from the early 1930s. And who could miss that swinging '60s leopard print carpet? The Prime Rib has been around long enough to see its style fall in and out of fashion.

When Nancy Dorman and Stanley Mazaroff first saw the old stone farmhouse in northern Baltimore County, it had holes in the walls and raccoons in the basement. But it stood in the middle of 85 acres of farmland, with cows grazing in the distance and sweeping views of rolling countryside all around. That's what convinced them to buy it as a second home. "We always wanted a place in Maryland that reminded us of our trips to France and Italy," Mazaroff said. "This was a little bit of Italy in Baltimore County.

It's a cold, gray Friday afternoon in a dark and drafty concrete warehouse at an industrial park in Columbia. Not exactly the setting in which anyone would expect to find glamour, wit or the next big thing in pop culture. But through a series of doors built into a maze of temporary walls and stage flats, there's a group of a dozen tall director's chairs bearing Vice President of the United States seals set in two ragged rows along with a bank of TV monitors and warming lights. And in the center of the first row, sitting sideways in a black power suit coat and skirt, legs casually crossed, is Julia Louis-Dreyfus, star of HBO's new political satire "VEEP.

Brady Anderson is carving a small block of time out of his packed training schedule to demonstrate the true purpose of the athletic life, which is not about money or women or fame or even fun. It's about beating you. The field of play - in this case - is a pingpong table in the middle of the Orioles' spring clubhouse at the Ed Smith Stadium Complex, where the team is preparing - with Anderson's help - for the 2012 baseball season. But it could just as well be a tennis court or a flag football field or the running track.