Man oh man, back in the saddle after a day home with a wicked sore throat. And I only had about 50 emails to get through this morning which, believe it or not, was less than I'm used to.

So, my story tonite on the pedometers was a long time coming. Pat Dooris pitched it to me initially a few months ago and I sent it along to the managers who gave me the green light to set it up.

After that, I made contact with the school and the P.E. teacher. We worked out the details (like making sure all the kids could be taped, the timing, etc.) and set it up. Of course as luck would have it, the day we were to shoot it we had to cancel. That happens regularly in this business, but we went ahead and set it up a second time and viola: pedometer power hit the airwaves tonite at 5.

You should have seen those kids hamming it up for the camera. Cute, cute. Sometimes I have to play this game where I ask the kids, "Who wants to be on camera?". When they raise their hands I tell them the shots we put on the news are the ones where they are NOT staring into the camera or yelling "Hi Mom". That usually helps get them refocused on the poor teacher who has a hard enough job without us there to slow things down.

Anyway, this was a great story so I was pretty enthusiastic about sharing the work Karen Roney has done.

As promised, I wanted to give you some additional information about pedometers. First, here is a decent link I used as one source for a previous story I did on pedometers... http://http://walking.about.com/cs/measure/bb/bybpedometer.htm. There are a lot of links to follow but it will give you a broader overview of what to look for in what price range.

Here is a cool link once you get a pedometer: http://http://www.trainster.net/. This free website is run by a local man who used his pedometer to help him back to health after battling a life threatening disease.

For teachers: Karen says she called around and asked various stores what kind of a deal they could give her on a bulk order. The other thing she did is called stores and businesses offering pedometers as a promotional tool to see if they would make a donation. I know you can also contact your nearby hospital and ask if it has some on hand as part of its community health advocasy.

And finally on a totally unrelated note.. picture time. Here is a shot of Joe Donlon on that crazy exercise ball I told you about in one of my first blogs...

What did I do before I got my camera phone??? Email me: sstricklen@kgw.com