Treadmill

It took exactly two weeks for Kirstie Durr to break a pledge to get in shape for the new year on her brand new ProForm 525 X treadmill. It wasn't for lack of willpower. Blame this resolution relapse on the $450 treadmill that her husband purchased for her online as a Christmas present. The confounded contraption simply went kaput in the middle of a fairly innocuous 45-minute walk. "It just got stuck on 10, a really, really steep incline," said Durr, 36, a senior vice president of a high-powered marketing firm in Baltimore.

The U.S. surgeon general recommends sedentary people try to burn at least 150 calories a day to stay healthy. The amount of exercise it would take for a 150-pound person to meet that requirement would include:Walk on a treadmill: 4 mph, 32 minutesJog slowly on a treadmill: 5 mph, 18 minutesRide a stationary bike with moderate resistance: 10 mph, 22 minutesWork on a stair-climbing machine: moderate pace, 21 minutesWash and wax your car: 45-60 minutesRake leaves:...

Where do media get figures on what things cost?Where do the media get the "cost" numbers they seem compelled to report to support many news stories?The Sun on May 14 reported that Anne Arundel County wasted $3.3 million responding to false burglar alarms last year. Where did that number come from?Did the police response require additional police to be hired? Or, was the number calculated using an average hourly rate times the time estimated for the police already on the payroll? Was it an actual, above-budget expenditure?

Treadmill test endorsement scanted factsYour paper's contribution to the recent media blitz intended to soften the blow of the treadmill emissions test is disappointing, given your perpetuation of bad "facts" on which the blitz relies and on which misinformed individuals and organizations have chosen to support the test.I'll give but two examples:Check the math. We are told (in American Lung Association commercials) that the test will reduce emissions by 71 tons per day. We are also told by officials (as quoted in The Sun on Sept.

Two months after the controversial treadmill-style emissions test became mandatory, state officials yesterday tuned up the testing process, promising motorists a smoother ride -- and continuing the $150 limit on emission-related repairs.Among the Motor Vehicle Administration's changes, slated to be in place after Oct. 1, are a lift bar to allow cars a nearly bump-free entrance to the treadmill, a television monitor illustrating the test and a personal "greeter" to explain the exam.Also, those age 70 and over who drive no more than 5,000 miles a year will be exempt from the $12 emissions test -- treadmill or tailpipe -- that must be performed on 2.1 million vehicles every two years.

From Hagerstown to Grasonville, motorists who ventured into vehicle emissions testing centers yesterday discovered their universe had changed.The good news: No waiting, at least not on the first day of mandatory dynamometer testing. The bad news: Check out those last three words.For the first time, car owners in Baltimore and 13 counties had no choice but to confront the hotly debated treadmill test so touted by environmentalists and dreaded by talk show hosts and car enthusiasts.They watched in glass-enclosed waiting rooms as cheerful strangers took their keys and drove their cars on rollers at speeds equivalent to 55 mph.For some it was an annoyance.

GOV. PARRIS N. Glendening did the right thing in vetoing a bill aimed at weakening Maryland's auto-emissions testing program. Conservative legislators are trying to whip up an emotional frenzy over a treadmill test for cars that will become mandatory in this state on Oct. 1. Yet the test is safe and simple -- hardly the personification of government evil opponents allege.Had the governor signed this bill, Maryland stood to lose $98 million in highway funds by the end of the year. Even worse, the federal Environmental Protection Agency would have imposed a far more drastic auto-testing program, including the dreaded dynamometer treadmill, with much stiffer clean-air standards for car-owners to meet.

THE U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL Protection Agency has stepped up its demand for cleaner air in the Baltimore and Washington regions, which will mean mandatory testing of motor vehicle exhausts on the dynamometer, a high-speed treadmill.Gov. Parris Glendening said last week vehicle dynamometer testing will begin in June, without further delay, as the best way to improve air quality. Otherwise, the state could face federally imposed restrictions on industry and construction and loss of federal dollars.

MARYLAND'S General Assembly voted with its heart, not its head, when lawmakers approved a bill this month banning mandatory treadmill tests as part of the state's auto-emissions inspection program. That leaves Gov. Parris N. Glendening little choice -- if he uses his head -- but to overrule that emotional legislative decision and cast his first veto of 1997.If the governor fails to act by May 15, the Environmental Protection Agency says it will impose a federal clean-air program on Maryland that hurts drivers, businesses and the state's highway program.

After surviving its own treadmill of political debate and performance problems for nearly three years, a stricter vehicle emissions test is about to become mandatory in Maryland.Drivers, here's fair warning: Beginning Wednesday, the first 25,000 notices will start showing up in the mail summoning cars and light trucks to one of 19 state-owned centers for required dynamometer testing.Unlike the traditional tailpipe test, which has been standard in Maryland since 1984, cars will be driven on a treadmill by an attendant.

It's 7:30 in the morning and I am on a treadmill at my health club, watching CNN on the big plasma TV and slowly getting a migraine. I am here because if I didn't do this, I would weigh 400 pounds instead of having the sleek, pantherlike body I have now. A sign nearby says something about a yoga class. Don't talk to me about yoga. I tried it once. I went with my wife and a friend to this yoga place in Timonium. You had to take off your shoes, which I wasn't crazy about, and it was 95 degrees in the room.

Frank Cashen once had five World Series rings. "I gave them all away. I have five sons," he said the other day from his house near Easton. These days, he enjoys his oysters -- and loves oyster stew. And, he says, "My wife Jean makes the best crab cakes on the Eastern Shore." Cashen, 81, who grew up in Gardenville and was a News American sportswriter and National Brewing Co. executive, was the Orioles executive vice president and general manager during a 10-year stint with the club that began in 1965.

It took exactly two weeks for Kirstie Durr to break a pledge to get in shape for the new year on her brand new ProForm 525 X treadmill. It wasn't for lack of willpower. Blame this resolution relapse on the $450 treadmill that her husband purchased for her online as a Christmas present. The confounded contraption simply went kaput in the middle of a fairly innocuous 45-minute walk. "It just got stuck on 10, a really, really steep incline," said Durr, 36, a senior vice president of a high-powered marketing firm in Baltimore.

KENNETT SQUARE, PA. -- Ten years ago, Barbaro would not have left Pimlico Race Course alive. Many feared that the Kentucky Derby winner would die at Pimlico when a tarpaulin was brought onto the track after he suffered three catastrophic fractures and dislocated a joint in his right hind leg seconds out of the starting gate in the Preakness Stakes. But Barbaro was rushed to the George D. Widener Hospital for Large Animals at New Bolton Center. Housed on a former farm property, it is the closest major veterinary hospital to Baltimore and to home for the horse, trainer Michael Matz and the owners.

There's a new piece of exercise equipment in our house that's getting a great deal of use, and when I say "a great deal of use," I am, of course, lying. It's my wife's new treadmill, the one she had me drag out of her car, up the driveway, into the house and down a flight of steps to the family room. Oh, you should see this baby. It has a calorie counter, heart monitor and pulse sensor. It has a "Power Incline" button and a "Speed Control" dial you can set for any of four "Speed Training Zones" you wish to experience.

The screen on the elliptical machine says you traveled 4 miles and burned 300 calories. Your heart is racing, and you're soaked in sweat. Nice workout, true. Lots of calories burned? Well, maybe. The bells and whistles on those fancy machines that light up the gym may be impressive, but using them in a health or weight-loss plan takes more common sense than blind trust, experts say. That's because those readouts, depending in many cases on the quality of the machines, are estimates, not exact figures.

I'm confused about the elliptical machine and the treadmill at my gym. Which machine would give the best and fastest results for losing pounds and losing inches from my hips and thighs? I sweat a lot more using the elliptical and burn more calories. But someone told me that using the treadmill will actually firm up the body more than the elliptical. On the elliptical, I set the resistance at number 7. On the treadmill, I run at 4.5-4.7 mph. I exercise about five times a week and want to be as productive as possible.

Home is where the heart is. It's also where you'll increasingly find a gym to work that heart, along with abs, lats and every other body part that can benefit from the lubrication of regular exercise. According to the National Sporting Goods Association, home-gym equipment racked up $4.7 billion in sales in 2003. Treadmills are the runaway favorite purchase, with annual sales topping $2.5 billion. But many people don't stop there. They build fully appointed, and occasionally regal, workout rooms complete with stationary bike, stair climber, rower, multistation exercise machines, free weights, medicine balls, mirrored walls, televisions and more.

If you ask Serge England Arbona's wife, she'll tell you he's a little bit nuts. He has to be to do what he did over the weekend: run 152.27 miles on a treadmill in 24 hours - staking claim to four world records and tormenting every major muscle group in his body. "These runners, especially ultra runners, have a crazy obsession with running," Jeanne England-Arbona, said yesterday. Her French-born, 38-year-old, handyman husband - who has a penchant for 100-mile races through the mountains - started his run at noon Saturday in a Towson YMCA, dead set on breaking the 24-hour treadmill distance record, which he did yesterday by more than three miles.

Ultra marathon runner Serge Arbona is calm, confident and drinking a lot of water today as he prepares to try to break the 24-hour world mileage record on a treadmill. Arbona, a lean, hard, 6-foot, 166-pound jack of all trades, plans to start his run to nowhere at noon Saturday on a brand-new treadmill at the Towson YMCA. He has to beat the record of 149.1 miles in 24 hours now held by a German named Karl Graf. "I'm confident now," he says. "I wasn't so sure about three or four weeks ago, [I was like]