Last week, we revealed a miracle holiday health salve guaranteed to get you through the holidays unscathed — walking. A daily walk, we noted, could alleviate a mountain of seasonal stress and keep you from gaining weight to boot. Of course, we acknowledged, it is the holidays; the demands of the season might make it tough to get out every day. Realistically, we asked, how many days a week could you commit to walk: six? Four or five? One … hopefully? Yesterday, we shared the results of that survey. We also shared what you told us were your favorite walks.read more
If you’re looking for a time of year that’s hardest on your body, you’d be hard-pressed to beat the one that kicked off with pants-unbuckling Thanksgiving and ends with a cold pack on your head New Year’s Day. Think about the damage alone done by the one-two punch of Thanksgiving and Black Friday.read more
Diane Van Deren has climbed the highest peak in South America, Argentina’s 22,834-foot Aconcagua. She’s run a who’s who of endurance racing’s top events, including Colorado’s Leadville 100 and Hardrock 100, the latter, with 33,000 feet of total climbing, considered by many to be the hardest 100 miler around (she’s done that one six times). In 2008 she won the 300-mile version of the Yukon Arctic Ultra 300, vowed at the finish she was done with racing in temperatures of 50 below zero, then won the 430-mile version of the same race the following year. Before that she played five years on the women’s pro tennis tour with the likes of Chris Everett, Martina Navratilova and Tracy Austin.read more
Monday — never an easy time for the outdoors enthusiast, especially come summer. After a weekend of adventure, returning to the humdrum work-a-day world can make one melancholy. To help ease this trying transition, we’re running a new feature every Monday, at least during the summer, called 90 Second Escape. Essentially, it’s a 90-second video of a place you’d probably rather be: a trail, a park, a greenway, a lake … anywhere as long as it’s in the sun.read more
“There is a style of yoga that will meet any physical needs you have. It doesn’t matter what age you are; It takes you where you are, and improves you from there.”
That’s not according to the Yoga Chamber of Commerce. That’s according to 61-year-old Nancy Wren of Matthews, who first relied on yoga to help her through pregnancy — and labor — in the 1970s, and more recently used it to cope with the physical demands and stress of helping her ill husband, and then to help her through the grieving process when he died. Wren is something of a poster child for the several-thousand-year-old practice of yoga, which the Mayo Clinic defines as “an alternative medicine practice [that] brings together physical and mental disciplines to achieve peacefulness of body and mind, helping you relax and manage stress and anxiety.”read more
