SportsGeezer

Cheaters Sometimes Win: Here's Why They Do It

Thanks to WebMD for this intriguing piece on why people cheat. David Callahan, author of The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead, tells WebMD that while it's hard to document, he thinks cheating is more common now than it has been. Donald McCabe, professor of management and global business at Rutgers Business School and founding president of the Center for Academic Integrity, says his own surveys of college students suggest a 30%-35% increase in some types of cheating during the 1990s. The experts quoted here don't tell us why our tennis partner insists that our serve was out when we clearly saw otherwise, but they do offer a few insights into the kind of person who is likely to see things the way they want to see them. Most people cheat, the experts say, not because they want to win, but because they are terrified of losing. What can we do about it? The experts have no advice, but we do: You can cheat back, or you can just get mad and beat the pants off them.

Vegetables Build Strong Bones

Got milk? Who cares? A new study by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis found that poeple who don't eat dairy foods had bones that were just as strong as the bones of those who do. The research, reported in the Boston Globe, compared 18 average Americans with 18 strict raw food vegans ages 33 to 85, and found that the vitamin D levels of the vegans were ''markedly higher" than average. Wait, there's more. The vegans studied had low levels of C-reactive protein, an inflammatory molecule that is becoming linked with the risk of heart disease, diabetes and other chronic diseases, and lower levels of IGF-1, a growth factor linked to risk of breast and prostate cancer.

Swimming FAQ

The Moving Crew, the Washington Post's health and fitness consultants, persuaded Donnie Shaw, director of aquatics at the National Capital Y, to answer questions from aquatic-minded readers. Want to know what to do about ear infections? Whether you sweat when you swim? Jump in.

Tennis: New Season, New Shoes

Time to play tennis, and time to reconsider last year's tennis shoes. Here, to help you compare last year's shoes to this year's shoes, is a short piece by Roy Wallack that ran in the L.A. Times. Remember: treat your feet well, and they will return the favor.

Urban Cycling Suite: San Francisco, Seattle, New York, Washington and Austin

In San Francisco, the best bike trail runs along the north edge of Golden Gate park, starting at the eastern end and rolling downhill to Ocean Beach. In Seattle, what may be the sweetest urban cycling route in the country is just getting off the drawing board. In New York, Van Cortland Park is the choice place to pedal. In Washington, it's  a swath of land on the city's northwest border, between D.C. and Maryland in Rock Creek National Park, and in Austin, take the 15-mile backtrack of the Barton Creek Greenbelt. These tips on the very best of urban biking come packed with many more in a very smart series of articles published by Outside magazine and its travel partner, Away.com. No one is arguing that these city trails are preferred to, say Moab or the hills of Vermont, but if one of these cities is where you and your bike happen to be, you've got to love the one you're with, right?

Last Minute Marathon Training

Three weeks away from the 109th running of the Boston Marathon, it's a bit late to start training, but for those who have qualified for the historic 26 mile, 385 yard contest, there are still some tweaks that can knock a few minutes off your time. Tapering, or reducing one's daily distance, should start about two weeks before the race. This excellent marathon training site, appropriately named Marathon Training, offers a helpful explanation of tapering, and includes a chart with a recommended tapering schedule. There is plenty of other good advice here too, such as this bit of wisdom that is so obvious that it is often overlooked: don't forget to clip your toenails.

Sleeplessness, and What You Can Do About it

With just about every newspaper reporting on the recent poll that found most Americans chronically underslept, one paper is offering some advice. The Wall Street Journal suggests that those who suffer from insomnia, not just a lack of sleep, try a few non-pharmaceutical remedies before resorting to chemicals. One often-successful method involves "talk therapy" and concentrates on positive thoughts, so that instead of worrying that you'll never get enough sleep, you tell yourself that you're actually getting more sleep than you think. Another technique, sleep restriction, deliberately deprives subjects of sleep and allows them to go to bed only when they are very tired. A third solution involves deep relaxation through yoga or other exercises. The Journal tells us that doctors also recommend that people limit the consumption of caffeine, alcohol and certain medications that might cause wakefulness. Booze might help you get to sleep, but it will just about guarantee that you don't sleep well.

High Cholesterol Not All Bad

While high cholesterol increases the risk of heart disease, it also appears to be associated with better performance on tests of mental skills like memory, concentration, abstract reasoning and organization.  That news, reported in the New York Times, comes from researchers working on famous Framingham heart study, an 18-year-research project that just keeps producing. The Times reports that the researchers were able to look only at the total cholesterol levels, and so could not tell whether the so-called bad and good cholesterol had different effects.

Spring Is Sports Injury Season

In New England, where I play soccer on the fabulous Wayland Spirit team (the Spirit is willing, but the flesh it is weak), spring is known as the season of the pulled hamstring. In this helpful (if hopeful) piece, Los Angeles Times writer Jeannine Stein says it doesn't have to be that way. The best solution, experts tell us, is year round activity, but what if it's too late for that? Take it slow, Stein suggests, and whatever you do, don't try to play through a serious injury. Not unless your goal is a more serious injury.

Is Rising Early a Virtue or an Ego Trip?

In this success worshipful culture, the fourth great lie may be "I never sleep more than four or five hours a night." Yet, as this story in the New York Times reveals, many who make that claim take cat naps in the afternoon and sleep away their weekends. More importantly, research shows that the main benefit of rising early may be the self-satisfaction of believing that one is more virtuous that late-sleepers. But for what? The Times points out that reseachers have yet to find a correlation between sleep habits and income, and there are many very successful people who routinely go to bed at three in the morning and sleep until noon. What it comes down to, is seems, is style. That and an unwillingness to buy into the cultural bias against sleeping late.