Treadmill

On snowy days, many competitive runners train indoors on a treadmill. Increasing the incline angle gives them a harder workout. All good treadmills have a mechanism that allows you to raise the front part, to simulate running up hills. The incline is necessary for training because running on level ground does not adequately strengthen your upper leg muscles.Running is a lower leg sport, and the only time that you really stress your upper leg muscles is when you lift your body upstairs or up hills.

It's finale time! Make some party noises, put on some party hats, drink some party beverages, whatever floats your finale boat. I'm gonna dive in because of all the stuff that is happening, but I will foreshadow that this ending is not as predictable as you would think. Unless you actually predicted it. To start off, the teams fly to Japan. They're en route to an island, and things are already crazy. Big Brother misses a bus, but then they catch up while Team Army misses a train, which causes them to miss the last ferry of the night.

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.

Charm City residents looking to tone up for beach season have a number of options. They can hit the treadmill, take up yoga or start dancing off the pounds with Zumba. But there’s another, more extreme way to get in shape that’s gaining popularity in Baltimore: training with cage fighters. At Ground Control Academy in Canton, where some of the area’s top mixed martial arts fighters train, owners are seeing an increasing number of members who never plan to step foot in a cage, but value what the intense MMA workouts can do for their bodies.

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.

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]

FOR THE SECOND YEAR, Gov. Parris N. Glendening has responded to problems with Maryland's auto emission inspection program by seeking a one-year postponement of the controversial treadmill-testing of vehicles. That's a prudent course, given the continuing problems at the 19 stations run by the private contractor, MARTA Technologies Inc. of Nashville, Tenn.This time, the governor should wisely use the delay for a thorough re-examination of this expensive auto testing program, which was pushed through in the last month of the lame-duck Schaefer administration.

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.

Debbie Katz works at a health club surrounded by more than 100 cardiovascular machines. She could hop on a stair climber or elliptical trainer, pedal a recumbent bike or throw a few jabs in a kick-boxing class. But getting a workout in is not that easy. "I just don't have time to do as much as I want to do," says Katz, a membership coordinator at LifeBridge in Pikesville. At the end of the workday, she wants to be in her Owings Mills home with her two teen-age children, not in the gym. Several weeks ago, she decided to bring her workouts home.

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.

Although doctors often advise Parkinson's disease patients to exercise — and the more intense the exercise, the better — new research from the University of Maryland Medical Center shows that long walks at a more comfortable pace may be the best medicine. Dr. Lisa M. Shulman, co-director of the University of Maryland Parkinson's Disease and Movement Disorders Center, made the surprise discovery recently that low-intensity workouts make the most difference in mobility and gait, which become a problem for most of those who sufferer from the disease.

Her Asics laced up and her water bottle at her side, Meredith Dobrosielski stepped onto the treadmill for a robust half-hour walk. For the Towson runner, this wasn't just any trip to the gym. The session took place in a lab at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center in Baltimore. And each step offered information on the impact of exercise on her fetus. Dobrosielski is about 8 months pregnant. Doctors expect the information collected to fill in some gaps in the data on how much pounding is OK for a developing baby.

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.

Gov. Martin O'Malley says he learned a hard lesson last week: He's not 20 anymore. Hoping to add spice to his workout routine, the 44-year-old politician abandoned the elliptical machine in favor of some "high-impact running" on the treadmill, only to develop sharp pain in both knees. The pain in the right one went away, he said, but the left just got worse. A trip to the doctor Thursday confirmed that he had suffered a stress fracture in his left tibia and will be forced to use crutches for four to six weeks, he said.

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.

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.

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.

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.