The Tennessean from Nashville, Tennessee • Page 32

SECTION 3DC0M1CS TheTENNESSEAN TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 1989 Smm-bike-riM yotir way to 5CHWEIP- A ancWtness 5DCR0SSW0R1) better heal MM rttmia Rimiy Jr. Statt Swimmers take off. in the first leg of the Music Gty Triathlon. Darcy Lee prepares to bike the second leg. Runner Margaret Croos breezes through the 1 OK race.

'i v. 4 1 GLORIA BAIJ.ARD Staff Wnur Some people swim to stay fit; some run, some ride bikes. Lavergne's Belinda Leslie does all three, and whenever possible she combines these activities. Leslie was one of about 500 triathletes who par-Od paled in Sunday's Music Qty Triathlon. She finished the swim-blke-run race In 3 hours, 10 minutes.

Not the best, Leslie said, but certainly far from last It was a noteworthy accomplishment, considering that Leslie, 28, as a single mother of two with a full-time Job, has precious little time to train for such an event "I train an hour here, an hour there. I Just do it whenever I can, however I can," said Leslie. She is like the majority of racers that came out Sunday morning to swim almost a mile, Jump on their bikes to pedal for 25 miles, then run more than another six. The object for these amateur triathletes is not to win, Just to finish. The vast majority are fitness-oriented people, all with various reasons for competing." said Pat Walsh, publicity director for the Music City Triathlon.

"I usually finish in the last third," Leslie said. Tm not at the very end, but Tm not competitive." For a person serious about the sport training may mean working out a schedule. Emily Bruno, a Nashville trtathlete who placed first in her age group (40-44) in Sunday's race, suggests a more structured routine. "Usually, a good training program Is to plan to do each of the sports three or four times a week" during me training period, Bruno said. To get ready for the 1500-meter swim In Percy Priest Lake, Bruno suggests swim-ming a mile three times a week.

"Most swimmers do sprints and speedwork during the training," she said. Enduring the 25-mlle bicycle trek during the triathlon probably means riding three or four times a week during training three of the workouts might be 20-mlle rides, with one longer workout of 40 or 50 miles. To prepare for the 6.2-mile foot race, running five times a week Is a reasonable goal, for a total distance of about 25 miles. One day's workout should be a longer run of eight or nine miles, Bruno suggests. Professional triathletes, including some who may use this race as a warmup for the Infamous Ironman competition in October, will be doing three or four times those training distances, Bruno said.

She did Ironman four times the distances of the Music aty Triathlon two years ago. "If not uncommon for the professionals to bike 200 miles a week," she said. But if the goal is to Just get through the three events in a respectable time, getting your training time In wherever you can may work, Leslie believes. Leslie, who had "always been heavy," did her first triathlon in 1984, after losing 65 pounds. She began training for it three months before the event; bicycling and swimming were already part of her exercise routine, but she had to learn to run.

"I Jogged and walked a mile a day, and increased it gradually," she said. "I trained for the triathlon in an educated manner, but I did it quickly." Sunday's race was Leslie's 16th triathlon. With her work schedule she is a sales representative at Southfork manufactured housing development she must carve out time to train whenever she can. She runs or bikes during lunchtime two or three days a week. She regularly combines running and swimming by Jogging to a lake, swimming, and Jogging home.

Often she uses her bicycle Instead of a car to run errands. "I keep a stash of clothes and exercise equipment with me," she said, so working out can be a spur-of-the-moment decision when tie opportunity arises. .1 It has also given her confidence. "It's a really neat feeling of my body being strong, and being Independent I'm not helpless," she said. Her goal now is to encourage oth- Similiar messages against drunken driving are being broadcast by some beer companies, like Anheuser-Busch and Coots.

But the brewers are not part of the Harvard campaign. "They expressed some interest but we made a conscious decision to work separately from them," Wlnsten said. He said the campaign did not want to encourage drinking. The Harvard project has evidence that it has achieved its goal, Wlnsten said. He cited a Gallup Poll taken in June in which 72 of those responding said they used a designated driver on social occasions all or most of the time.

In 1988, with only public-service announcements on television, 62 answered the question the same way. "I don't take those results literal-ry," he said. Turn to PAGE 2D, Column 4 I I 1 Doing triathlons (she calls it the "Yuppie has become a hobby, she said. "My hobby is being in good physical condition. Doing triathlons gives me a goal to work for." be abused.

Television producers are already often approached by product-placement companies seeking to have products shown and even endorsed in movies and on television. "Television is always conveying messages, some about violence and sex," Wlnsten said. "There's a message sent through advertising that It's cool to be thin. That has enormous Impact on the incidence of anorexia." But he said, "it would be unjust for TV to be criticized for giving socially positive messages." Some advertising executives estimate that the Harvard campaign has so far received $100 million worth of free television publicity from the messages in the television episodes and the public-service announcements carried by the networks. C-Span viewers are loyal Don't mess with cable's GSpan viewers.

That message came across loud and clear to Viacom Cablevision this past weekend when they replaced C-Span on Friday with what they expected to be a whole weekend of the Qnemax network for free. By mid-afternoon on Friday that plan was aborted, following some 40-50 phone calls from irate viewers, which caught the folks at Viacom by surprise. They thought a free weekend of Clnemax, a "premium channel" (one you pay extra for) would be welcome to many subscribers who only get the "basic" cable package. "We intended to put it on a channel that would have a low vtewershlp," said William Tierney, Viacom's assistant general manager. "We made a mistake.

"GSpan does have a quantlfiably lower vtewershlp, but Its viewers have a very high degree of loyalty." When Tierney refers to "quantifiable viewership" he is talking about Viacom's viewer surveys, which, he says, show a low C-Span viewership. It was this same thinking that led Viacom to decide against airing C-Span IL However, judging by the Immediate and sizeable response to the decision to replace C-Span for a weekend, maybe that viewer research is flawed. "It might be," conceded Tierney. "I think, however, that It's more a question of loyalty than numbers." THE FOX AFFILIATION Reports In the press last week about WZTV-Channel 1 7 wresting the Fox affiliation from WCAY-Channel 30 were greatly exaggerated, according to a Fox spokesman. "Very unlikely," is how Bob Mariano, Fox's vice president of affiliate relations for the central region, characterized the possibility that Fox might leave WCAY for WZTV.

When Michael Thompson and MT Communications bought WCAY last year, the Fox affiliation was part of the deal. That agreement runs out in March 1990 and execs with ACT III Broadcasting, which owns WZTV-Channel 17, make no secret of wanting to join the Fox chain. "We like Fox very much," Bert Ellis, vice president of Act III Broadcasting, said last week. "We have six Fox affiliates and a seventh under contract and we bought ZTV figuring it would eventually get a Fox affiliation." However, WCAY has shown good progress in the ratings books, coming from a distant second to a neck-and-neck race with WZTV and the people from Fox seem to have noticed. "We met with people from Fox in Memphis last weekend and we were led to believe they are looking forward to our application for renewal," according to Jim Warner, general manager of the station.

"We'll make that application in January and we expect to hear before March that the affiliation has been renewed." While ratings are a strong factor in deciding which station gets the affiliation, they are not the only criterion according to Mariano. "We are watching the development of the station and we are very pleased with Michael Thompson's operation and development of the station," he said. "Unless that trend changes, I can't imagine why we'd change." None of this discourages Ellis, who calls WZTV the "flagship" of Act III Broadcasting and expects Channel 17 to outperform Channel 30 and win the Fox affiliation. "Fox will make the determination on ratings and this November will be CAVs last opportunity to beat ZTV and we don't think they've got a chance," Ellis said. "We've got the best schedule we could have and we think it's a very strong lineup." Not so, says Warner who points to the 24 of 34 weekday half-hours from 7 a.m-mldnight in the Nielsen ratings where WCAY is equal to or passes WZTV.

Nashville viewers can only benefit from this kind of competition between the Independents, regardless of who winds up the Fox affiliate after next March. driving home a new message I TP" i ers to enter triathlons. "It's not that hard, not that complex." Leslie said, "The message I try to share is to Just do it You may be good at it But if you don't try, you'll never know." NBC special to target kids, drugs Staff reports and Tennessean news services NBC News has scheduled a one-hour educational special for students to watch in school today when President Bush delivers a speech on drugs and education at The special program, to be broadcast from 1 1 a.m. to noon, will have Tom Brokaw as its anchor. Brokaw will discuss drug use among young Americans with students and teachers at schools in Washington, Chicago and Glen-dale, Calif.

Bush's remarks will be carried live by WSM-AM (650) and will last approximately 15 minutes. The NBC Radio Network is carrying the speech nationwide. The TV program starring Brokaw will air on WSMV-TV, Channel 4, Nashville's NBC affiliate. "We're hoping that schools across the nation will use the program to promote classroom discussions of the drug problem," said Katherine McQuay, a spokeswoman for NBC News. "We think that this is an important issue and this seemed like a good opportunity to reach a group we don't usually have access to." The program will Include reports on young people who have abused drugs and completed rehabilitation programs, and conversations with celebrities who have been active in drug education campaigns.

There will be no advertising during the program, McQuay said. The other major networks plan to broadcast the president's speech without additional special programming. TV shows BILL CARTER ftew York Times News Service -At many barbecues and softball games this year, a new player was on the scene. Position: designated driver. Some people who signed up for that assignment probably found their inspiration from an episode of Cheers, Family Ties, The Cosby Show or Hunter.

In a significant display of television's Dower to brine about social change, a public-service campaign has helped to raise national awareness of the importance of selecting a non-drinking driver before a social occasion to reduce drunken driving and accidents. The campaign, called the Harvard Alcohol Project was organized by the Center for Health Communications at the Harvard School of Public Health. Jay A. Wlnsten, the center's director, said 45 episodes of different network series this year have carried a message about drunken driving in response to the campaign. Five network series have each devoted an entire episode to conveying the campaign's message, he said.

Other programs are expected to mention the message in the new television season. The campaign aims at achieving nothing less than a "change in American social norms," wlnsten said. The Harvard project seeks to persuade Americans that the idea of setting aside one partygoer as a sober driver is not only socially responsible but also socially correct The sweeping nature of the desig-nated-driver campaign raises questions about how easily the power of underlying television messages could Learning to deal with alcohol, drug abuse No snakes, please rrrl jw, ROLAND XH-H Julie Morris is a Girl Scout leader. She was with a group of Brownies from the Grassland community in Williamson County on a nature outing at Owl Hill. However, she declined when given a chance to touch a real live snake.

Interviewed by Max York. I will do a lot of things for Girl Scouts, but I won't touch snakes. Most of these girls don't mind at all. I have a daughter, Catte, in this group and I have one who is 10. She is In scouting, too.

Health Message is a weekly column on health education provided as a community service by the Nashville Academy of Medicine. This week's column is submitted by Roland Gray, a Nashville area physician specializing in pediatrics andaddictionology. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation states that 18 million Americans have symptoms of alcohol dependency or significant problems associated with alcohol consumption. The annual cost associated with alcohol and drug problems will be $229 billion in 1990. The costs can be broken down in these areas: $136 billion related to alcohol; $76 billion related to other drugs; $17 billion related to interventions and drug related aids.

QUESTION What is chemical Scouting has grown up a lot since I was a child. They start out as Daisies in kindergarten. I was a Brownie one year in Atlanta. Scouting has changed a lot since then. It has changed with the times.

So I help organize troops in my area. I do it because I enjoy it I believe in it I wouldn't do it if I didn't These little girls are so sweet Their reactions are wonderful. They are anxious to learn. To relax, I like to do needlework. I like to read.

I'm heading up a Carnival at our elementary school. I enjoy watching these girls grow and learn to work out their own problems. ANSWER Alcoholism and drug addiction are variations in chemical dependency. A good definition of chemical dependency Is the continued use of mood altering chemicals in spite of negative consequences associated with their use. Chemical dependency is a complex disease affecting all aspects of life including mental, physical and spiritual well being.

Tum to PAGE 2D, Column 5.