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which is OK for Curling and Golf like he said but a very bad idea for Mountain Climbing, Running, and Bicycling!

Drinking while running is basically the point of Bay to Breakers, right? You'd be surprised, a lot of distance runners also seem to like drinking heavily from time to time. From the link:

"alcoholic mile". you take 4 shots b4 it starts and wait about 30min. then you start and every lap you take another one. by the time we finished I ran about 2miles w/ swerving and whatnot!

As far as drunk cycling, check this guy out. Notice the guy missing teeth in the pic halfway down. Does that count for anything?

The High Fructose Corn Syrup in a can of soda is typically 55% fructose and 43% glucose, and 2% other sugars. An apple has 60% fructose, 40% glucose. Dextrose (table sugar) is 50/50. Do you seriously think that fructose is somehow more healthy than HFCS?

All these amateur armchair nutritionists are making people think weight loss is complicated. Calculate your basal metabolic rate. This is the amount of calories you burn laying in bed all day doing nothing. Click the link to the Harris Benedict Equation. This gives you a simple guide to account for your daily activity level by multiplying your BMR by a number from 1.2 to 1.9. This gives you your maintenance calories. Eat 500 calories a day less than this number and you'll lose weight. If you're not losing weight after two weeks, you've given yourself too much credit for activity, or you're not counting calories somewhere (like the people who smother food in ketchup or heap jelly on their morning toast because they think condiments don't count). Every time you lose 5 pounds, re-calculate.

If you're feeling like an over-achiever, do something like Couch to 5K in addition. I've lost thirty pounds doing these two things, and believe me when I tell you that when you were the fatass in high school who always walked during gym class, it feels fucking great to be able to run three miles.

The biggest event on the Mt Washington auto road is actually a running race held each summer. It's an intermediate distance road race - about 8 miles (12.7 km) long. But it's uphill all the way: there's 4600 ft (1400 m) of elevation gain, which tends to make it feel more like a half marathon. Also, it's held on the mountain that claims to have the "world's worst weather." It is not atypical for the course start to have temperatures in a 60s at the start of the race under clear skies, only to have the runners finish in near-freezing temperatures, fog, and 50 knot winds.

In spite of that, the winner of the race generally can finish in only one hour. Last year's winner made it in just under an hour.

Get off your ass! Run a 5k!

I actually walk to work and back home, a total of 100 minutes/day. It's a bit tiresome but it does a good job on my body after 9 hours of sitting on my ass at work.

My preference is running. It's rather cheep to start, all you need are a good pair of running shoes. (But get a good pair, from a running store, fitted to your foot and stride type.) Other than that, you really only need a track or some roads. I hadn't run since high school, and now, 15 years later i am thinking about trying for a half marathon before the end of the year. I also love the fact that just about every weekend there is a 5k or 10k race near me, which not only helps to motivate, but also are usually created around some charity, so it is good karma as well to help raise money for a cause.

If you want some guidance getting started, cool running has a great starter guide. Link

I have also become a big fan on the Nike+ sport band, since i can check my distance and pace while i am running. I find that instant feedback about having run farther and or faster than my last run helps to motivate me during the run, and the ability to track my run history online helps motivate me between runs. I think that this ends up being one of the most important things about exercise, make sure you like it, because if you don't then you won't stick with it.

My advice, get out and run. But short of that, just make sure your doing something. That is the really important bit.

I myself have struggled with my weight for a number of years. Both of my brothers were tall, skinny and naturally excelled at cross country running. I was the fat one. I never seemed to be able to figure out why.

I tried a number of things: brute force calorie cutting, the yogurt diet, and even (largely because I was still in hs and my parents were doing it) the Atkins diet.

I managed to lose weight with each of those and, I will admit, I lost the most weight on the Atkins diet. However, there was one hitch; I was *constantly* tired. The lack of carbs was killing me, but the weight I was losing motivated me to stick with it. I lost about 25lbs and was able to keep it off for roughly a semester before going back up to gaining back about 10 pounds and eventually getting back to where I started Sophomore year of college. I decided that I needed to lose weight again, but I wasn't sure where to start. So I just decided to make it simple: no fries, no sodas, no candy, etc. You know, just cutting out the obvious junk food. What I did differently this time was added exercise to the mix. Thanks to following 'this plan, I went from being 5' 9", 190lbs and unable to run a mile to being 5'9", 165lbs and able to run 5k at a clip. I still have a ways to go, but the point is, introducing exercise into the mix helped more than I ever thought it could and it made losing the weight easier and more fun than I ever though it could be.

The guy in TFA seems to be too narrow in his focus; it's not just about manipulating numbers on a scale. If people paid more attention to getting good quality exercise and measuring the results each week, I think many would be surprised at how well they can do without any fancy talk about glycemic indices and so forth.

I've found these guys to be really helpful. There's plenty of advice on all things running... choosing the right gear, where to run, how to run, how to deal with strains & sprains... how to avoid strains & sprains. There's also a nice community of people there for advice and support. I started their beginner program last year... aptly named the "Couch to 5K" program. I've dropped 20 pounds, and I'm still going down. Good stuff. As pointed out in another post, the hardest thing for me to learn for me the right pace to run. I run significantly slower than I originally thought was optimal. After a while, you learn to listen to your body and keep a pace you can maintain. Running 30 minutes at a pace you can maintain does you a hell of a lot more good than running 5 minutes at a pace you can't.

I'm doing the Couch to 5K plan from the Cool Running site. It's designed to get you from amoebic blob to able to run a 5K race in 9 weeks. I'm repeating a week because my schedule stopped me from running two of the three days I was supposed to last week, but I've already made huge strides (no pun intended).

Coolrunning.com
Couch to 5K Plan

Once you finish the 5K plan, there are programs to help you improve your 5K run times, move on to a 10K, half marathon, marathon, and 50k race. The people on the forums are supportive and non-judgemental and they are eager to give you advice on stretches, technique, injury prevention, equipment, and all other running-related topics.

No disclaimer needed. I'm not associated with the site or anyone on it except for the fact I am doing and enjoying the Couch to 5K program.

I'm doing the Couch to 5K plan from the Cool Running site. It's designed to get you from amoebic blob to able to run a 5K race in 9 weeks. I'm repeating a week because my schedule stopped me from running two of the three days I was supposed to last week, but I've already made huge strides (no pun intended).

Coolrunning.com
Couch to 5K Plan

Once you finish the 5K plan, there are programs to help you improve your 5K run times, move on to a 10K, half marathon, marathon, and 50k race. The people on the forums are supportive and non-judgemental and they are eager to give you advice on stretches, technique, injury prevention, equipment, and all other running-related topics.

No disclaimer needed. I'm not associated with the site or anyone on it except for the fact I am doing and enjoying the Couch to 5K program.

No affiliation, just someone who has used it in the past. I know there will be those who say "Just Do It (TM)", but for me, it helped to have a bit more structure than that.

That's right. Marathon runners are vulnerable to hyponatremia. Massive sweat + intake of unsalted water leads to sodium ion imbalance inside the body. It's one of those nasty conditions where the brain gets disoriented so the victim doesn't realize that they are headed for death.

Hyponatremia a Concern for Marathon Runners

I know the Slashdot stereotype is that nobody *here* has to worry about such things, but actually, I bet there are people in the Slashdot community who run this far and this hard.

• Pretty low costs. You need a decent pair of running shoes, but other than that you don't need any other equipment.
• Really good workout. You can burn a lot of calories in a pretty short time period.
• Not boring. You can vary routes and terrain to your heart's content.
• Flexibility. Given 45 minutes (total time), you can easily pop in a 30 minute run and a shower and be ready to get on with your life. This is really attractive to me. I can do this in the morning (I need to shower anyways), and it is out of the way. Do this 3 times a week, and it is very unobtrusive (as workout plans go).

I started with the Couch-to-5k running plan. I liked it because it started out very easy, and built to 3 miles over a couple of months.

I know running isn't for everyone, but it does have some advantages that are hard to beat.

My I recommend the Couch to 5k running plan?

When I spotted this story on Wired this morning, I decided to look this guy up (John McLanahan) - I've had my own experiences with NSI (not quite to the same extreme as he has), and wanted to find out some more details about his situation and see if I could help somehow.

Tried searching the web for him - found a 29-year-old John McLanahan from Boston who came in 134th in a half-marathon, another who is a corporate lawyer in Georgia, and one who lived sometime in the late 1700s (from a few geneology sites). From the Wired article, it sounded like the Boston McLanahan might be the one (right age range, into racing) but there was no e-mail address listed on the marathon results.

So, I went to the NSI WHOIS server, searched for "McLanahan, John", and found a John McLanahan with a Boston address (actually, three or four handles with the same name and mailing address) who currently owns a number of domains related to racing (roadraces.com, sailingraces.com, runningclubs.com, raceplanning.com, raceinformation.com, coolraces.com) - sounds like the right guy...

...and then I notice the other domains this guy has registered. It looks like he owns a number of domains that are stock-ticker symbols for .com and hi-tech companies (TalkCity, Voyager.Net, ChemDex), some life-insurance related domains (weblifeinsurance.com, lifeinsuranceinfo.com), and some more generic business-related domains (bankinginformation.com, companyinterview.com). Unless his business plan covers more than just racing, I'd say he's been in the domain-speculation game for a while himself... especially when just about every domain I tried going to said "domain for sale".

Not to excuse NSI's more-than-usual imcompetence, but suddenly I don't feel quite so sorry for this guy...
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