A year ago I decided to piece together my own Peloton-compatible stationary spinning cycle, I still love it. I never have to go to a gym full of PEOPLE. Read the rest

A Colorado Springs running enthusiast, known locally as "The Mad Pooper," has been leaving gifts on a private lawn in a most public fashion.

Via Competitor.com:

A mystery woman in Colorado Springs, Colo. is giving runners a pretty crappy reputation. According to local CBS affiliate KKTV, this runner has been defecating outside the house of resident Cathy Budde for the past seven weeks. Even worse—her children first spotted the woman.

Budde and her family have caught the runner at least three times. However, this has not stopped this mystery runner. She continues to leave waste behind at least once a week. The woman has gone so far as to change her running schedule to avoid prying eyes. The community has nicked named her “The Mad Pooper.”

Budde thinks the act is intentional, even if she is unsure who the woman is.

“I put a sign on the wall that’s like ‘please, I’m begging you, please stop.’ … She ran by it like 15 times yesterday, and she still pooped,” Budde told KKTV.

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The only thing that would make this video of Chinese firefighters jumping rope would be a Yakety Sax soundtrack.

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I decided I needed to start exercising again, and spinning--cycling on a stationary bike--is the best choice for me. Peloton looked awesome, but too expensive. I figured out a way to enjoy the features of Peloton I care about, without spending the big bucks. Here's how you can do it, too. Read the rest

Scientists are recruiting thousands of women for a large clinical trial to find out if weight loss should be prescribed as a treatment for breast cancer in some patients.

The trial will put obese and overweight women who are 18 and older and recently diagnosed with breast cancer on diets and track exercise to see if losing a little weight could help prevent a cancer recurrence. Read the rest

Sarah Kurchak, a personal trainer who has experienced clinical depression, offers the most humane advice for using exercise you're likely to find. Read the rest

Endorphins may have been getting too much credit for “runner's high,” that euphoric lift we get when we exercise intensely. Read the rest

These machines look like they are doing all the work.

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A Christian exercise program from the 1980s in which a Southern lady promises to exercise your soul, as well as your behind. Read the rest

A new study shows that people using a stationary bike to exercise pedal faster when they're also working on a mental task. The University of Florida researchers had actually expected that the multitasking would hinder both activities. Read the rest

Manly mindfulness for mellow macho muscle men.

At Matter, physical therapy professor Eric Robertson writes about a very rare condition called rhabdomyolysis — it's what happens when chronically overworked muscle cells rupture and overload your kidneys with massive amounts of protein. The results are painful, reasonably disgusting, and potentially deadly. Rhabdomyolysis used to be something you only had to worry about if you were, say, part of an elite military squad or a professional athlete. But as more average folks have gotten into elite physical training regimens through programs like CrossFit, the profile of people damaged by rhabdomyolysis is changing. Training like a bad-ass can bring along some of the physical risks of being a bad-ass. Read the rest

Some people are naturally better than others at pulling off the elusive pull-up, writes Kyle Hill at Scientifica American. For them, it's all about mass-to-arm-length ratio — ideally, you want a low mass and short arms to minimize the amount of energy it takes to pull your body upwards. But Hill insists that the less genetically fortunate can learn to do pull-ups, too. It's just something that takes dedicated training. Read the rest

This is the wacky story of how I biked across the country on my exercise bike and lost a lot of extra pounds in the process.

After reading Neal Stephenson's essay on using a treadmill desk in Some Remarks, I've decided to try it for myself. But I don't want to ditch my beloved desk (a wooden kitchen table) -- instead, I was thinking I'd raise it on blocks to standing height, get a treadmill, and wedge the handlebars under the desk so that I could walk while using it. Does anyone have any recommendations for a treadmill model? It looks like it's really hard to use a manual treadmill without holding onto the handle-bars, so I'm guessing that means I'll need a motorized one. But motorized treadmills all seem to have their controls in the front, which I envision wedging under the desk, rendering them inaccessible. Have you tried this? Got any ideas? I think I probably want something like this, but available in the UK, and cheaper if possible. Read the rest

Something I enjoy: Specialized equipment that looks completely and utterly ridiculous when you watch people using it out of context.

Case in point, this advertisement for the HydroWorx X80 Underwater Treadmill. You have never seen Olympic-caliber runners look sillier. (Sadly, it's not entirely underwater. When I first saw the name of the clip, I was really hoping for guys in scuba gear.)

Also: I've apparently reached the age where current Olympians look to me like they ought to be too young to drive. Crap.

Thanks, Eli Kintisch

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Click here to play this episode. Gweek is Boing Boing's podcast about comic books, science fiction and fantasy, video games, board games, tools, gadgets, apps, and other neat stuff.

Every once in a while on Gweek, we take a break from talking about movies, science fiction, video games, and gadgets. This is one of those times. I spoke with Bruce W. Perry, the author of a brand new O’Reilly/Make book called Fitness for Geeks: Real Science, Great Nutrition, and Good Health.

If you’re interested in how things work, Bruce’s book will help you experiment with one machine we usually ignore -- our body and its health. Bruce takes a science-based approach to fitness, and shows you healthy ways to tinker with your lifestyle, by using apps and gadgets to self-track your fitness, by creating the ratio of macro- and micro-nutrients work that best for you, and by applying biohacks, such as high-intensity exercise and good stress to your system.

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