Training for a marathon requires careful preparation and steady, gradual increases in the length of the runs.{#blank#}1{#/blank#}, buy the best-fitting, best-built running shoes you can find. No one can say which brand will work best for you or feel best on your feet, so you have to rely on your experience and on the feel of each pair as you shop. When you have found shoes that seem right, walk in them for a few days to double-check the fit.{#blank#}2{#/blank#}.As always, you should stretch(仲展) at least ten minutes before each run to prevent injuries.

    During the first week, do not think about distance, but run five minutes longer each day.{#blank#}3{#/blank#} it is wise to take a day off to rest. But during the next week, set a goal of at least a mile and a half per run.{#blank#}4{#/blank#}.After two weeks, start timing yourself. {#blank#}5{#/blank#}.Depending on the kind of race you plan to enter, you can set up a timetable for the remaining weeks before the race.

A. After six days

B. For a good marathon runner

C. Before you begin your training

D. With each day, increase the distance by a half mile

E. If they still feel good, you can begin running in them

F. Time spent for preparation raises the quality of training

G. Now you are ready to figure out a goal of improving distance and time

    London has become a cycle-friendly zone after the launch of a new bike hire scheme.{#blank#}1{#/blank#}

   {#blank#}2{#/blank#}First you have to sign up to the scheme to be sent a key. The key will unlock one of the bikes, which are kept at docking stations in and around central London. You have to pay an access fee for the key and then you pay as you go, for the length of time you use the bike.

    Transport for London, which runs the scheme, are hoping to have 6,000 bikes and 400 docking stations in place by the end of the year. {#blank#}3{#/blank#}London Mayor Boris Johnston launched the scheme and said London has been “filled with thousands of gleaming (发光的) machines that will transform the look and feel of our street and become as commonplace on our roads as black cabs and red buses”.

{#blank#}4{#/blank#} On the first day some people found they couldn't dock their bike properly and their usage of the bike had not registered. Transport for London did admit they had been expecting a few “teething problems” and have said they would not charge for the first day as a “gesture of goodwill”. Some other people have criticized the lack of docking stations and locks for the bikes as well as the price it costs to hire the bicycles.

    {#blank#}5{#/blank#}“My crusade for the capital to become the greatest big cycling city in the world has taken a great pedal-powered push forwards.”

A. So how does it work?

B. How do you like it?

C. However, there have been a few problems since the scheme was launched last Friday.

D. Despite the comments, the green-thinking London Mayor still says with certainty.

E. However, the London Mayor is confident of the scheme.

F. It has been designed to encourage more people to cycle in and around central London.

G. The new hire system is hoping to ease congestion(拥挤) in London and is expected to create up to 40,000 extra cycle trips a day into the city centre.

    A 16-year survey on the arctic Norwegian island of Svalbard found the reindeer（驯鹿）there have declined in weight by an alarming 12 percent. The reduction in average body-mass is being blamed on global warming.

    In research presented lately at a meeting of the British Ecological Society in Liverpool, scientists will explain how rising temperatures are making female reindeer difficult to obtain nutrients during important periods of being pregnant.

    Snow in Svalbard typically covers the ground for eight months of the year, which, combined with low temperatures, limits grass growth to June and July. But as summer temperatures have increased by around 1.5℃, grasslands have become more productive, allowing female reindeer to gain more weight by the autumn and therefore to conceive（孕育）more calves.

    However, warmer winters have brought with them greater rainfall which freezes when is settles on the snow, therefore locking out the reindeer from the life-supporting food below. As a result, female reindeer are becoming starved, causing them to give birth to much lighter young. The average mass of an adult reindeer in 1998, when the survey began, was 55kg, but by 2016 IT had dropped to 48kg.

    Professor Steve Albon, an ecologist at the James Hatton Institute in Aberdeen , said that, because the mammals have a relatively high surface-area-to-volume ratio（表面积与体积比）, they are no particularly energy efficient.

    Reindeer can often access the inadequate food sources beneath the snow by clearing IT away with their antlers（鹿角）, but they cannot break through the hard ice. Without access to the food in winter, calves are being born far lighter than they should be. Numbers of reindeer have also increased rapidly in the past 20 years, meaning that those which are born are facing greater competition for food. “The implication（含义）are that there may well be more smaller reindeer in the Arctic in the coming decades, but possibly at the risk of catastrophic die-offs because of increased ice on the ground,”said Professor Albon Despite the gloomy findings, reindeer appear to be suffering less from the impact of climate change than some other arctic species.

    83-year-old Antonio Vicente has spent the last four decades of his life fighting against the trend. As Brazilian landowners cut down rainforests to make room for profitable plantations(种植园) and cattle grounds, he struggled to bring the jungles of his childhood back to life.

    "When I was a child, the peasants cut down the trees to make grasslands and charcoal, and the water dried up and did not come back," he told the reporters, "I thought: 'Water is valuable, no one makes water and the population will not stop growing. What is going to happen? We are going to run out of water.'"

    With only some donkeys and a small team of hired workers, Antonio Vicente set about bringing back the forest to his land. What started out as a weekend hobby soon became a permanent way of life, and Antonio recalls often spending whole days and nights in his young jungle, surrounded by rats and foxes, and eating banana sandwiches for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Over the last 40 years, he has planted an estimated 50,000 trees on his 31-hectare land, which now make up a small but unique area of rainforest, and a haven for wildlife.

    As the forest grew, the water returned, and Antonio says that there are now over 20 water, sources on his land that were no longer there when he bought it. Then the animals started making a home there. Today, the forest is alive with the sounds of birds and insects living there, and more species are settling in every year.

    "There are toucans(巨嘴鸟), all kinds of birds, squirrels, lizards, and even the boars are returning," 83-year-old Vicente says, "If you ask me who my family are, I would say all this right here, each one of these that I planted from a seed."

    I graduated in 1941 and of course got caught in the war. In 1945 I was out, twenty-one years old, a soldier through 35 bombing missions, and at the University of Washington taking creative writing courses, something I'd looked forward to all through the Air Force.

    I'd started writing when I was nine and writing seemed to be the only thing I'd ever be able or want to do. My teacher was a new man named Grant Redford, a very good short story writing teacher and a sad man. He was from Montana and had been connected with the old Rocky Mountain Review. I think it became the Western Review but I'm not sure and I don't bother to look it up. I'm afraid I was never much of a student for Redford. My stories were hopelessly self-indulgent(任性的); on and on about my personal problems, without form, without development, and without even any good writing.

    However, I did write humor in those days and had no trouble getting it published in the campus magazine, though I'd hate to see it now. Mostly my writing was used to get myself attention, to satisfy a terrible personal interest in self-admiration, and it wasn't until I concentrated all my efforts on poems that I was to realize the only real reward of writing, that special way you feel just when you've done something you like. That's far more satisfying than seeing your name in print, good reviews, praise or applause after a reading. And more lasting.

    If you have never been on a cruise (乘船游览), it can seem like its own world—with its own rules and secret language. So here we are going to lay out the very basics of going on a cruise.

    Do I need a passport to go on a cruise?

    You may need a passport, but you should take one anyway. Besides the fact that you are going to need an ID card to board the ship in the first place, a lot of ports require one.

    How much luggage can I take on board?

    For the most part, cruise ships aren't like planes—there isn't a strictly regulated amount of luggage you can take with you, and you are not going to be charged for bringing too much. Keep in mind that cabin storage space can be tight. Everything, including your empty luggage, is going to have to fit inside and you don't want to be tripping over it for your whole vacation.

    Things like guns and knives are banned, but regulations vary from ship to ship about things like irons (generally a no) and hair dryers (generally a yes). Some ships allow you to bring a bottle of wine, but nearly all ban bringing your own hard alcohol.

    What's the process for boarding a cruise ship?

    Boarding a cruise ship is like boarding a plane—there are regulations or when to arrive, how to check-in, and what security you have to go through. Most cruise lines have transportation available from the airport; otherwise they normally own a paid parking lot where you can leave your car.