Washington Post staff writer Joel Garreau informs us that it’s only a matter of time before scientists, like those who created "Schwarzenegger rats," with necks wider than their heads, find their research boosting the performance of human athletes.  Like the rats, the technologically-enhanced athletes will be stronger, live longer, and […]

We’ve heard this claim before, most loudly from barefoot marathon runner Ken Saxton, but now we’re hearing from fitness writers at the Times of London: Running shoes are your feet’s worst enemy. According to the Times, few of us (ballerinas and some athletes excluded) do the work necessary to strengthen […]

Really short, really informative, and really nicely-written, this description of Boulder, Colorado as  a “front range Shangri-La” is a SportsGeezer Trifecta. Writing for the New York Times, Susan Enfield Esrey tells us that Boulder “blends hardcore athleticism, latter-day hippie sensibilities and university-town liberalism – often melded into the same Teva-wearing […]

The Boston Globe begins a month-long series on cycling in New England with a two-day trip along the country roads of southeastern Rhode Island, a place where “horses, goats, and sheep share the landscape with elm, oak, and apple trees.”  The piece is written by the very credible bicyclist and […]

First kickball bounced up from elementary school playgrounds to adult leagues in cities across the land, and now we’ve got stockbrokers pedaling their way through chukkers in bicycle polo matches.  As this story in the L.A.Times reports, it’s hard to say exactly how many Americans play bicycle polo, but it […]

You believe it, but researchers don’t–despite decades of study. We’re talking about the common conviction that damp weather makes arthritis worse. According to this piece in The Scientific American, scientists have yet to establish an objective relationship between arthritis severity and weather patterns. Moreover, the journal tells us, detailed interviews […]

Sunshine, it seems, is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it helps our bodies produce vitamin D, which has been shown to fend off certain cancers. On the other, it can encourage the growth of skin cancers, which are discovered on about one million Americans each year. As this piece […]

Harvard Magazine has a lot to say about the benefits of exercise, likening it to a pill that regulates our appetite, changes eating habits so that we prefer healthier foods, makes us test younger according to a variety of physiologic measures, increases our blood volume, helps us burn fats, stimulates […]

One of the best pieces of advice ever offered to us came from the Sun Mountain Fiddler, a classicly trained musician who could play any fiddle tune in any key, with a few licks from Beethoven and a verse or two sung in Mandarin. “Sometimes,” Fiddler said, “the best thing […]

If you’ve done much hiking, you’ve probably seen them: purposeful-looking people striding through the woods with poles in their hands. Perhaps your first thought was that there was something missing from this picture– snow, for instance.  Perhaps you feared that these people had been wandering in the woods since last […]