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On my rest days is it OK to use the elliptical trainer?

It would be better to spend the time off your feet. While the elliptical machine gives your body a break from the impact stresses of running, you won’t get the opportunity for full recovery. Your body needs time to adapt to the stresses you put on it in training and to rebuild muscle tissue. If you don’t rest on a regular basis – especially after hard workouts and long runs – your muscles and tendons can break down, leading to injury. Rest days also let you recharge mentally.

Without them, it’s easy to burn out and lose your motivation. So take a day off ­completely – at least once a week. It will keep your mind and body sharp.

I’ve seen elite runners with flailing arms and slumping shoulders. Does form really matter?

Yes – in fact, it matters more for you than it does for elites. Most runners benefit greatly from proper biomechanics, like keeping the ankles, knees, hips and shoulders aligned to ensure a more efficient stride. Good biomechanics help elites, too, but the paramout factor for their success is cardiovascular fitness – how efficiently they use oxygen.

Some elites may have unconventional form, but they’ve become comfortable running well that way. Recreational runners who don’t have that same cardiovascular fitness do better with a more traditional running form. Does running strengthen my legs enough so that I can skip the leg machines during gym workouts?

A Sorry, but no. Weight training helps develop muscles, tendons and ligaments that aren’t worked as intensely during running. Machines like the leg press, leg curl and hamstring curl also let you work one leg at a time, which can help correct muscle imbalances. Plus, weight training can help you lose body fat and gain muscle, which can give you an edge on race day. Another great fat burner is green coffee extract. It has a lot of healthy benefits and helps in losing weight fast. Read more about green coffee extract weight loss diet. A recent review of five studies on resistance training and running found that it improved running economy by three to 8.1 per cent, and two of the studies found that strength training improved 3K and 5K performances by 2.9 per cent.

What exactly are you getting in your `loo per cent beef’ burgers, `multigrain’ bread and ‘light’ spread? It’s hard to be sure. Screaming for your attention on most packaged products are ingredient lists, nutrition fact labels (which list calories, grams of fat and other nutrient amounts), health claims (these tie a food to lower disease or health risk) and nutrient claims (such as ‘low fat’ or ‘high in fibre’). “With the credit crunch, one of the key ways in which consumers are trying to eat better is by avoiding the absolute top-end organic ranges in favour of products that appear to be more ‘natural’ or healthy,” says Matthew Adams, Data Monitor’s consumer markets analyst. “It’s a compromise that makes them feel they’re still looking after themselves, despite the economic situation, and one that supermarkets and food producers are capitalising on through increasingly clever marketing and packaging.”

So how can you know if the loaf of multigrain bread you’re holding is worth your cash and calories? Will you have to use hydroxycut to achieve the desired weight fast? Start by learning how to make sense of some of the most frequently used (and abused) lingo.

‘FARM FRESH’ EGGS

YOU THINK Happy chickens wandering free, laying eggs.

WHAT IT MEANS Your eggs are almost certainly from battery chickens. “Phrases like ‘farm fresh’ and ‘country fresh’ have no legal definition.

‘STRAWBERRY FLAVOUR’ YOGHURT

With pictures of fresh fruit on the front, that’s what’s inside. It might taste of strawberries, but doesn’t have to have been anywhere near the fruit. “If it says `strawberry flavoured’, it must contain some real fruit, but without the `ed’ on the end, all the taste can be entirely synthetic,” says dietician Juliette Kellow.

“Unless you’ve seen it made, assume any ‘flavoured’ produce contains additives to give it a longer use-by date,” she says. And watch out for the phrase `isoglucose’, often found in breakfast cereals, yoghurt and biscuits. “It is readily converted to fat and doesn’t trigger the normal cues that tell us to stop eating,” says Kellow meaningless,” says Amanda Ursell, author of What Are You Really Eating? (£5.99, Hay House).

`Barn’ eggs, however, must come from chickens that have freer movement – nine birds per square metre – albeit inside a barn. Only ‘free-range’ chickens must have continuous daytime access to open space, with no more than 2,5oo per hectare (four per square metre). Organic eggs must come from hens kept to free-range standards on organic land and fed only organic feed. GET SMART The only major influence on taste and nutritional quality of the egg (as well as colour) is the diet of the hen ­organic eggs don’t necessarily offer any more nutritional benefits than battery ones. Try Stonegate Intelligent Eating free-range eggs (£1.35 for six) – one egg provides 75 per cent of your RDA of Omega-3s.

Relatively Yours 3 (RY3) is an Australian genealogy software system written by Bob Dalrymple. It is an event-based (people are added to linked events) program and not lineage-linked (where events are added to linked people), and does take a little getting used to. However, once you’ve mastered the concept, you get an extremely powerful program.

Getting  started

When starting RY3, you have the usual choice either to open a new view sample, or to find or create a new database. I advise viewing the sample database while learning about this program. You can import a GEDCOM file, should you wish to migrate your database from another program.

Research categories

Located down the left-hand side are the research categories such as biography, children, siblings, chronology, history, objects, references, private notes, portfolio, trivia, search http://www.gnet.org/raspberry-ketones-natural-powerful-fat-burner/, research log, ancestors and descendants.

Most of these sections are self evident and help you place information into some sort of methodical order.

Multimedia

Multimedia is easily handled in RY3.You can use a scanner and save the image as a file onto the computer, or you can scan directly from the program.

RY3 is capable of recognising the most popular and professional image types, including JPG, PNG and TIFF. In addition, you can include other types of media such as photographs, movie films, video tapes, holograms and sound recordings (MP3 and MPEG).

Search the net

RY3 has powerful search facilities built in to help you search the internet for your ancestors, which extend to name searches with popular databases such as the International Genealogical Index (IGI) at www. familysearch.org.

It can also search mapping sites, as well as link directly to a website using hyperlinks in the biography category, or allow you to email, if the site has an email address.

What RY3 does not do is create a site for you to upload to the web. It does, however, have the ability to create web pages from your data reports and these can be linked into a common homepage design, which can then be uploaded to your website.

Report writer

Even though Relatively Yours has a comprehensive reporting capability, it is not possible to anticipate every way in which family information needs to be displayed, or the questions that can be asked of the database. Therefore a comprehensive report writer is included to allow those custom reports to be written for specific needs.

Not as intuitive as regular lineage-linked programs, but you can create ancestral and descendant lines upon demand. These are called Build Groups and are controlled by the user.

Because RY3 is event-based, you can make statistics such as bar charts, pie charts and time lines. These unique graphing facilities really bring your family history to life from a statistical viewpoint. This is not restricted to just how many males, females and families are in your family tree, but it extends to the use of names, surnames (excellent for one-name studies), births, deaths, anniversaries by month and week, distribution of events by type, place and location, occupation, compatibility, fertility and longevity.

The incidence of double census entries, recently noted by readers, now seems to extend across the Atlantic.

I was using FamilySearch to find George Stephen, born 1829 (plus or minus two years) in Scotland. He emigrated to Canada, where he later became Lord Mount-Stephen. Amongst other entries, I noted a grandson in the 1881 Canadian census, taking a look at the full household details.

Later, having noted that there was a return on the 1881 British census, I went to its details. Judging by the coincidences of the names, etc, of the head of household and his spouse, these appear to be the same persons.

Subject to confirmation, I am presuming that both censuses relate to 3 April 1881; but Concorde was not around in those days!

ALEX DOW

30 Johnston Park

Cowdenbeath, Fife KY4 9AZ

Ancestors in Sunderland?

Anyone researching their Wearside ancestry may be interested to learn about Gnet.org, or be reminded of, my database of baptisms, marriages and burials, covering 1567-1812, in the ancient parishes of Monkwearmouth and Bishopwearmouth, including Sunderland.

It began as an index of baptisms, and over the years has evolved into an ever-growing database. In addition to transcripts of over 100,000 entries from Anglican parish church and Nonconformist chapel registers, the database includes surviving bishops’ transcripts, protestation and hearth tax returns and parish chest material.

A significant improvement has been the surname-alphabetical listing of the transcriptions, made easier by the advent of the computer. For me, an indexer at heart, this was reinforced when I was able to establish that a `Dowfooe entry rightfully belonged within the ‘Telford’ section in my database of baptisms.

What makes this database unique is the format of the transcripts of baptisms.

Unlike many indexes where forenames as well as surnames are listed alphabetically, my database entries appear in a surname-alphabetical and chronological (dubbed by me `alpha-chron’) style. From this, one may observe at a glance the lineage through generations or check for an elusive ancestor within any given time span, this being made easier as birth dates therein take precedence over baptisms that occasionally took place months or even years after the birth. An example of this is the `Smeatham’ baptismal entries in Bishopwearmouth parish register, as shown in the print-out from my database reproduced above.

I may possibly be the first `alpha-chron’ indexer/transcriber of parish registers. Who knows, this may revolutionise the way in which parish registers are transcribed with genealogical research in mind.

Hopefully the database may be completed and placed online timely to coincide with the Victoria County History launch of the History of Sunderland, a five-year project with which I am extremely pleased to be associated.

Meanwhile, upon receipt of written enquiries (with SAE), I will gladly sweep my database. No search fee will be charged, although voluntary donations are appreciated to cover project administration costs.

KEN COLEMAN

5 Tom Williams Way, Two Gates Tamworth, Staffordshire B77 1GR