Athletic Training

With a whoosh, the pack of bicyclists bears down on an automobile starting to pull away from the curb in front of the Brookside Golf Club in Pasadena. "Car!" shouts one of the riders in the front. "Car!" repeats someone deep within the pack. As one, the 150 cyclists veer slightly to the left and careen past the startled driver. In a flash, they're gone. Rattled, the motorist peers into his rearview mirror searching for more bicyclists. But there are none.

IT is 4:01 a.m. The red glow of the digital clock is clearly visible through the clear plastic walls surrounding my bed. It is mid-March, and the Boston Marathon is more than a month away. If everything works as planned, I will finish it in less than three hours. For several nights now, I've been sleeping in a giant plastic bubble as part of an unscientific but increasingly common experiment on athletic performance.

THE women of the LPGA are going the distance -- 284.5 yards to be exact. That was Karin Sjodin's average drive in 2006, the best on the tour. While the women's high-flying counterparts on the PGA tour have been driving the ball notably farther over the years, the LPGA players have been on a tear of their own. The women are hitting the ball hard. Not just harder than before. Hard. Between 1992 and 2006, the average driving distance for LPGA players increased 27.3 yards, from 223.3 to 250.6.

Here's what some LPGA players are doing to amp up their game. Natalie Gulbis With a steamy wall calendar, advice column and reality show under her belt, Natalie Gulbis represents the hipper, fitter face of the LPGA, and she takes her conditioning seriously. To maintain her 252-yard driving average, the 24-year-old works out five days a week, 1 1/2 to 2 hours per session, when she can.

The Dodgers first held spring training in 1901, in Charlotte, N.C. They hopped through a dozen other sites, including Havana, New Orleans and Hot Springs, Ark., before settling into an old naval air station in Vero Beach, Fla., in 1948. Over the decades, Dodgertown evolved into the most storied and arguably the most charming site for spring training. Fans and players mingled easily, along Vin Scully Way and Don Drysdale Drive. Coaches and executives rode in golf carts.

The Los Angeles Dodgers signed seven free agents this winter, including stars Jason Schmidt and Nomar Garciaparra, but the best deals they made might be the ones that enable them to move their spring home from Florida to Arizona. The Dodgers will pay nothing to terminate their lease in Vero Beach, Fla. They will pay nothing to move into a new, two-team complex in the Phoenix suburb of Glendale, Ariz., in 2009.

Covering, as it does, 3.7 million square miles, China ought to be big enough for the Dodgers and the New York Yankees. Populated, as it is, by more than 1.3 billion people, the country should provide ample opportunity for more than one team to teach baseball and, perhaps, someday reap the benefit of developing a major league player.

One of the keys to baseball's future lies in Compton, on fields so close to the 91 Freeway that the rumble of trucks and whoosh of traffic are part of the ambience. It lies in the hands of the 36 young men who gathered there last week for the Major League Baseball Urban Youth Academy's first high school showcase and displayed their talents for more than 130 scouts.

After six decades in baseball's most storied spring home, the Dodgers appear to be headed to the Cactus League. The Dodgers and Chicago White Sox have agreed to share a stadium and training complex in the Phoenix suburb of Glendale, with the grand opening targeted for 2009. Tom Lasorda will represent the Dodgers at the official announcement today in Glendale, home of the NFL's Arizona Cardinals and NHL's Phoenix Coyotes.

If it weren't for Nate Jones, it would be tempting to dismiss Floyd Mayweather as just another loud-mouthed, pampered, super-macho professional boxer. Mayweather gets points this fight week for knowing it was time for primping and promoting tonight's WBC welterweight title fight against Carlos Baldomir of Argentina at the Mandalay Bay Events Center. He knows there are two measures of a fighter -- winning, and home pay-per-view buys.