Anthony Quinn must be rolling in his grave. He played the experience-life-in-the-moment-with-all-the-passion-you-can-muster title character in the film adaptation of Nikos Kazantzaki’s novel Zorba the Greek.

It's over. This time for good.

It started out with such promise. We worked together, had the same goals, the same aspirations. But somewhere, somehow, something went wrong. Long periods of silence. We just couldn't communicate anymore.

And just like that – it ended. My latest affair with an exercise add-on.

I fried my personal digital music device – for the second time in less than six months. So I'm going back to going mostly solo. Enjoying my workouts the way they were intended to be enjoyed – without the intrusion of music.

It's been something of a typical afternoon here at the office. A second cup of coffee washing down a couple of bits of carbs from that coffee and donut shop across the street, a few hours after eating a lunch that contained a heaping helping of noodles.

Those carbs and that caffeine help me get ready for that commute home — a 13-kilometre or so run along Toronto's waterfront.

Caffeine and carbs - people much smarter than me say – will help me get through intense exercise and maybe even help me avoid developing skin cancer.

Caffeine, the science explains, offers the athlete the same boost as it does every sleepy-eyed person who tries to drag him or herself out of bed on a Monday morning. And carbs are what fuels your muscles.

Turns out I may have it all backwards.

Hey – wanna get fit? Then ditch that suburban spread, move away from the condo bordering the golf course and – by all means – back away from the ravine.

Concrete jungle's where you want to be. Stick to city living if you want to improve your chances at maintaining a healthy weight - if you believe some of the research that's out there.

Even urban birds seem to have a better handle on getting by than their rural cousins.

Now Dutch researchers are saying that living close to green space may not be the inducement you need to get active.

Let me preface this column by saying there are quite a few people like me who enjoy spending a couple of hours on a Sunday morning getting some exercise by running up and down riverside trails. Or urban paths. Or roads, if we have to, during the winter.

We pass the time between water stops talking, sometimes about what our sedentary friends say about our habit.

It was like that this past weekend, about 18 kilometres into a leisurely long run. One of our athletes – Will – who will be 62 when he runs the Berlin marathon this fall, complained about how a woman at work said that at his age he can't have too many kilometres left in his legs.

"Isn't it hard on your joints?" she asked. "Your knees must be killing you."

If they are, he's showing no sign of it. Will clocked an impressive-for-any-age three hours and eight minutes when he ran the London marathon in April. Good enough to place 10th in his age group.

That joint question always makes me cringe. Whenever someone asks me how my joints are, I want to answer, "Like they were in university - tightly rolled."

So you want to fit into that bathing suit by the time you head off to the beach this summer?

Better get cracking. Time's a wasting. Evenings are already feeling cool at six or seven degrees Celsius and the UV index has pushed wind chill readings well into the recesses of our minds.

We're a week away from the Victoria Day long weekend and just under eight weeks from Canada Day. If you need to drop those 10 pounds you added over the winter, that safe pound-a-week weight loss window is rapidly shutting.

Maybe you're considering one of those fitness boot camps that are so loudly advertised on the radio to jump-start your program.

Well, spring has sprung and the marathon season has begun.

For some of us, it means an end to a particularly long winter of running in the snow and cold in hopes of putting in a pretty decent effort over some 42.2-kilometre course. For others it means overcoming some pretty incredible obstacles.

Last weekend, one of the regulars with my Sunday morning running group said her training hadn't been going particularly well — and she was thinking of dropping out of the Boston Marathon, coming up on Apr. 21.

"I made the mistake of asking Derm for his advice," she said. "Now I gotta run it."

This hydration thing — maybe I've been taking it a little too seriously.

Like a lot of people, I make sure I take in a lot of water. The cbc.ca mug on my desk is almost always in the process of being drained of fluid.

There are two trails worn into the carpet that lead to and from my desk. One goes to the water cooler. The other points — as my father used to say — to my other office, down the hall.

I probably spend more time there in a day than most smokers spend hanging around 10 metres from the entrances to the CBC building getting their fix.

It's old news that people don't necessarily need eight glasses of water a day to remain hydrated. Now, a new study suggests there's little solid evidence backing the supposed health benefits of drinking lots of water.

There's a second running boom allegedly sweeping North America. The first one, some of us remember, was back in the 1970s, sparked by people like Bill Rodgers and his four Boston Marathon wins and writer/runner Jim Fixx. On this side of the border, Jerome Drayton's 1977 Boston win and Jacqueline Gareau's victory there three years later — after officials disqualified Rosie Ruiz — inspired hordes of Canadians to lace up.

Now, figures compiled by MarathonGuide.com in the U.S. show that the number of people completing marathons has been rising steadily for years. In 2007, 407,000 people crossed the finish line of a marathon in the U.S. That's a jump of about 35 per cent since 2000.

While there are no comparable numbers on this side of the border, anecdotal evidence abounds. The Chilly Half Marathon in Burlington, Ont. — held annually on the first weekend of March — has sold out two months in advance the past two years.

Canada's biggest road race — the 10K Vancouver Sun Run — attracted more than 53,000 entrants in 2007. They're looking to smash that record this year. It seems we're finally getting the fitness message.

Actually, we're not.

So you think getting off the couch and incorporating a little activity into your life will extend your youth and keep your inner geezer at bay?

Seems it might, according to a study published in the latest issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.

The study — out of King's College London — found some of what you would expect: that exercisers have lower rates of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, cancer, high blood pressure, obesity and osteoporosis. But it also suggests that being sedentary not only increases the risks of developing aging-related diseases and premature death, it may also hasten the aging process.

A thought rattled around my empty brain as I battled a 50-kilometre per hour headwind on an 11-kilometre run into work this morning.

What the hell am I doing? Even the sun appeared to have second thoughts about rising.

Yeah, conditions were far from ideal. I could just as easily have headed into the basement and run on the treadmill — wearing shorts. Or I could've hit the snooze button and let the sound of the howling wind lull me into a few more precious winks.

Thing is, if I wanted to get my exercise in today it had to be in the morning. Thank you schedule.

Forgive me Pre for I have sinned. In thought, word and deed. Indeed.

You know that I have always been a purist, boosting my meager athletic abilities with nothing but guts and determination. The sight of someone ahead of me and the sounds of my breathing, my thumping heart and my feet pounding the pavement have been all I've ever wanted or needed to push myself in this wonderful sport we call running.

Well, Pre, I have let you down.

Lately, I have taken to sharing those most intimate limit-pushing moments with the likes of Bob Marley, Annie Lennox, Bruce Springsteen and, yes, even Frank Zappa. You see, I recently came into one of those top-selling personal digital audio devices — a few of which also have video capabilities — and, I must say, I am somewhat hooked.

Envision success and you're likely to remain motivated in trying to achieve whatever goal you've set. Envision failing and you probably will. That's the kind of advice you'd expect to hear from most folks versed in the psychology of motivation.

But it's not what one group of researchers recently concluded.

Fear, the University of Bath study found, may be a stronger motivator to get fit than the hope of looking good.

As another marathon season winds up, I find myself asking a familiar question: is it time to incorporate other activities into my fitness routine?

Every year, the answer's been the same. No.

I've always felt that if you want to get good at an activity, do more of it. But that's my perspective.

If you have no interest in finding out how well you stack up against others, by all means, diversify. Walk, run, swim, cycle, play squash, dance. Do any combination of things that will get your heart rate up and burn calories. It can only do you good.

They're talking about it again — that mythical point when you're exercising hard and your mind and body seem to separate and this euphoric feeling comes over you. Runner's high, some folks call it. Hooey, according to others.

Meriam Webster defines it as "a feeling of euphoria that is experienced by some individuals engaged in strenuous running and that is held to be associated with the release of endorphins by the brain."

Last week, researchers at the University of Iowa rekindled the debate with their innocuous-sounding paper Exercise Enhances Myocardial Ischemic Tolerance via an Opioid Receptor-Dependent Mechanism.

In English, that means "runner's high" may not only make you feel good, it may help ward off heart attacks.