"Five Reasons to Make Walking Your Way of Getting in Shape"

That's the title of my latest post over at Associated Content from Yahoo! I hope that you find it helpful.

Health: Exercise regularly and say GoodBye to your Cancer

The new research reveals the fact that regular exercise can aid the sufferers fight against the cancer. A 30 minutes walk everyday, 5 times a week can stop cancer, lessen the process of the disease, boost recovery and stop its return.

The level of Insulin is cut through exercise, a hormone that causes most of the body's cells to take up glucose from the blood and generates faster cell growth, enhancing women’s risk of breast cancer and recurrence of the disease.This new research says that women who do not have any records of a breast cancer can really reduce their risk of having it by doing exercise, said Dr. Susan K. Boolbol, a breast surgeon at Beth Israel Medical Center.

Besides, exercise also burns fat and also cuts blood levels of estrogen and testosterone, two sex hormones produced in both men and women that have been associated with uterine lining, prostate and breast cancers. The burning of fats saves additional amounts of estrogen and thus by decreasing fatness, it reduces the risk of a series of cancers. Many doctors now are recommending most of their patients to do regular exercise in order to keep their health better or as part of a therapy to reduce cancer or risks involving it.

my dissatisfaction with active.com continues

(the letter I received from active.com)

Earlier post here. Now:

From: Jeremy Freese [mailto:jfreese@ssc.wisc.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, July 10, 2007 11:05 AM
To: 'activeadvantage@active.com'
Cc: '[username]@madisonfestivals.com'
Subject: membership cancellation

On June 23, I received an e-mail informing me that I was being charged $49.95 for a year membership in Active Advantage, on the claim that I had agreed to this charge if I did not cancel a trial membership in ActiveAdvantage that I supposedly signed up for when I signed up for the Madison Marathon. I have no recollection of having agreed to this charge, find it difficult to believe I would have signed up for it, and have not made any use of your services. On June 23, I responded to your customer website asking to cancel my membership immediately and asking for an immediate refund.

Instead, this weekend, I received a letter from your company dated June 27 (attached) whose first sentence is "Welcome Back to ActiveAdvantage!", suggesting that somehow my communication with your company has indicated a desire to continue with ActiveAdvantage rather than cancel. This is not the case. I would like to have my entire $49.95 refunded. As indicated, I have not used any of the ActiveAdvantage services, nor do I intend to.

I sought recourse to this today by calling the customer service number provided in the letter. After going through several touch-tone menus, I received a recorded message telling me that your system is down.

I am cc'ing an official from the Madison Marathon on this message. I believe the marathon would well serve its participants by reconsidering its relationship with Active.com. If this matter is not quickly resolved, I will be filing a consumer complaint with the state of Wisconsin against both Active.com and Madison Festivals.

Sincerely,

Jeremy Freese

OK, that resulted in a quicker response than I was expecting:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: activeadvantage@active.com
Date: Jul 10, 2007 11:38 AM
Subject: Trial membership canceled
To: [me]

We are sorry to lose you as an ActiveAdvantage member!

Thank you for using activeadvantage.

Sincerely,

Your ActiveAdvantage Team

I'm a little concerned about the 'Trial membership' in the subject line, as the whole reason I was charged is I was moved into regular membership because the 'Trial' I have no recollection of signing up for expired. I'll have to see if the charge is actually refunded on my card.

a portrait of the blogger as a successful half-marathoner and dissatistfied customer

I am so pissed. I got this e-mail today:

90 days ago you made a smart choice by clicking "YES" to accept your ActiveAdvantage trial membership offer when you registered for an event using Active.com.

This is just a quick reminder to let you know that your 90-day trial membership has expired, and you have been extended for a full year [for $50] as stated in the original offer. You are now a part of the fastest growing program for athletes and people with active lifestyles!

We hope that you have had time to review the amazing benefits and values that you receive by being an ActiveAdvantage member, ranging from travel discounts on air, car and hotel to huge savings with big name partners including: Enterprise Rent-a-Car, Wyndham Hotel Group properties, Choice Hotels, Circuit City, Barnes and Noble, Peets Coffee, AMC, Regal/Edwards Theaters, Rewards Network and more! [...]

What I registered for was the Madison Half-Marathon, which Sal and I ran over Memorial Day weekend. There is no freaking way that I would have intentionally signed up for a "trial membership" in an organization that doesn't offer any services that I have any interest in using, so whatever it is I supposedly clicked on must have kept the cost of doing so obscured. According to the site, I received a $5-10 "free gift" for signing up. I have no idea what this is supposed to have been. Anyway, I have sent them an e-mail asking for my money back, as well as a message to the organizers of the Madison marathon expressing my displeasure about their partnering with active.com. So, what's next? Why, write a blog post telling whoever would listen to be careful with any dealings with active.com.

BTW, I guess I never posted that Sal and I successfully completed the half-marathon (Chris did the whole thing, see his post here). Here we are before the race:



We ran at a leisurely pace, and Sal had to endure me being one of the chattiest people on the course. A high point may have been the half mile or so I spent describing the 1960's Australian television show "Skippy, The Bush Kangaroo."

"So, it's like Lassie, only a wild kangaroo. The characters will go 'Skippy, what is it?' and Skippy will make this toothclicky noise and they'll say 'Colin has fallen down a well?!!' But, Skippy will also do things that Lassie can't. Like there's this one scene where it looks like Skippy is cracking open a safe using only his paws. I think that's the mile marker up ahead. So, when they do the far off shots of Skippy, they use a real wild kangaroo, but then when they use the close-in shots of the paw action, it's just this puppet. Then for some mid-range shots, I think they don't even use a kangaroo at all but instead it looks more like a wallaby. Can you imagine if they sometimes switched off Lassie with some closely related dog species? Like one moment she's a collie, the next a coyote. You're not having any problems with chafing, are you?"

sal promised he would sign up too. will he? stay tuned. (if you are within a few hundred miles of madison, you should sign up too.)