6 . For a while, my neighborhood was taken over by an army of joggers. They were there all the time: early mornings, noons and evenings. There were little old ladies in gray sweaters, young couples in Adidas shoes, middle-aged men with red faces. “Come on!” My friend Alex encouraged me to join him as he jogged by my house every evening. “You’ll feel great.”

Well, I had nothing against feeling great and if Alex could jog every day, anyone could. So I took up jogging seriously and gave it a good two months of my life, and not a day more. Based on my experience, jogging is the most overvalued form of exercise around, and judging from the number of the people who left our neighborhood jogging army, I’m not alone in my opinion.

First of all, jogging is very hard on the body. Your legs and feet take a real pounding running down a road for two or three miles. I developed foot, leg and back problems. Then I read about a nationally famous jogger who died of a heart attack while jogging, and I had something else to worry about. Jogging doesn’t kill hundreds of people, but if you have any physical weaknesses, jogging will surely bring them out, as they did with me.

Secondly, I got no enjoyment out of jogging. Putting one foot in front of the other for forty-five minutes isn’t my idea of fun. Jogging is also a lonely pastime. Some joggers say, “I love being out there with just my thoughts.” Well, my thoughts began to bore me, and most of them were on how much my legs hurt.

And how could I enjoy something that brought me pain? And that wasn’t just the first week; it was practically every day for two months. I never got past the pain level, and pain isn’t fun. What a cruel way to do it! So many other exercises, including walking, lead to almost the same results painlessly, so why jog?

I don’t jog any more, and I don’t think I ever will. I’m walking two miles three times a week at a fast pace, and that feels good. I bicycle to work when the weather is good. I’m getting exercise, and I’m enjoying it at the same time. I could never say the same for jogging, and I’ve found a lot of better ways to stay in shape.

7 . Below is a web page from http://www.parents.com/

Kid of the Year Photo Contest

Enter your kid’s photo today and win! We’re giving away 52 weekly $250 prizes from Readers’ Choice votes. Plus, our editors will select one entry to win our grand prize of $7,000.

Official Contest Rules

No purchase necessary to enter or win. The Kid of the Year Photo Contest entry period begins at 12:00 a.m. January 23, 2022, and ends January 21, 2023 (the “Entry Period”). Entries must arrive by 9:00 p.m. on January 21, 2023 (“Entry Deadline”). Entries will not be acknowledged or returned.

SPONSOR: Meredith Corporation, 1716 Locust Street, Des Moines, Iowa.

ENTRY: There will be two methods of entry.

Share My Entry: Visit http://www.parents.com/photos/photo-contests-l/kid-of-the-year/ and click the button to enter.

Facebook Entry: Visit http://www.Facebook.com/ParentsMagazine and click the Kid of 2022 tab.

Then complete the registration form and follow the instructions to upload one album of up to six photos of your child aged three months to eight years. You may provide one description and one album title that will be applied to all photos. Photos, without any brand names or trademarks, must be taken by participants, non-professional, unpublished and may not have won any prize or award. Photos must be .jpeg or .bmp image formats and cannot exceed 3 MB.

This promotion is in no way sponsored, supported or run by, or associated with Facebook. You are providing your information to Parents Magazine and not to Facebook. The information you provide will only be used to run the promotion and register for Parents.com.

Photos must not contain material that infringes the rights of another, including privacy, publicity or intellectual property rights, or that constitutes copyright violation.

LIMIT: One entry per household, per child, per week. One weekly prize per child. For entries of more than one child in a family, the entry process must be completed separately for each child. No group entries.

9 . British Cycling had recently hired Dave Brailsford as its new director. At the time, professional cyclists in Great Britain had ________ nearly one hundred years of mediocrity(平庸). In fact, their________   had been so poor that one of the top bike companies in Europe ________ to sell bikes to the team because they were afraid that it would hurt sales if other professionals saw the British people using their bikes.

What made Brailsford different from previous coaches was his________ of searching for a tiny improvement in everything they do. The whole principle came from the idea that if you________   everything you could think of that goes into riding a bike, improve it by 1 percent and you will get a________ increase when you put them all together.

Brailsford and his coaches began by making small________. They redesigned the bike seats to make them more________. They asked riders to wear electrically heated over-shorts to ________ ideal muscle temperature while riding and used biofeedback sensors to ________how each athlete responded to a particular workout.

But they didn’t stop there.They________ to find 1 percent improvements in overlooked areas. They hired a(n)________ to teach each rider the best way to wash their hands to reduce the ________ of catching a cold. They even painted the ________ of the team truck white, which helped them ________little bits of dust that would normally slip by ________ but could affect the performance of the________tuned bikes.

As these and hundreds of other small improvements were ________, the results came faster than anyone could have ________. Just five years after Brailsford took over, they________ the road and track cycling events in all the important Games.

It was the final part of the 2016 World Triathlon Series in Mexico. W    1     just 700 metres to go, Alistair Brownlee was in the third place and his younger brother, Johnny, was in the l    2     . Alistair pushed himself towards the finish line in the burning heat, but as he came round the corner, he saw his brother a    3     to fall onto the t    4    . Alistair had to choose—brotherly love, or a chance to win the race?

For Alistair, the choice was clear. His brother was in trouble. He had to help. Alistair ran towards Johnny, caught him and started pulling him towards the finish line. Alistair then p    5     his brother over the line. The move put Johnny in second place and Alistair himself in third. It was an u    6     end to the race, but Alistair did not want to discuss it with the m    7     . He just wanted to see his younger brother, who had been rushed to the m    8     area.

The Brownlee brothers have been doing triathlons since they were children. “O    9     , when your older brother is doing it, you think it's a cool thing to do," says Johnny. Alistair says that they encourage each other as much as they can when they train. D    10     arguments over “stupid things" now and then, Alistair agrees that having a brother is an a    11    . “Throughout my e    12     life, I've had my brother trying to beat me at everything I do. It has been an e    13    . positive force."

Watched by millions, the ending to the race has d    14     opinions: should the brothers have been disqualified or highly praised for their actions? But for Alistair, this decision was easy to explain: “Mum wouldn't have been happy if I'd left Johnny behind.” At that moment, he was no longer an athlete a    15     for a medal—he was just a brother.