Sporting Goods

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Chasing a toddler around certainly qualifies as exercise. Still, if you feel that it's not enough, a bicycle-mounted child seat or a bike trailer can help you to cover some ground in the name of fitness and fresh air.

Bikes come in a wide variety of designs to handle everything from a light workout to an arduous cross-country tour. To find out which types offer the best performance for different riders' needs, Consumer Reports' testers took to the streets and hills and pedaled away.

Ellipticals are odd-looking contraptions, a fusion of stair climber and cross-country ski machine that you stand on and pedal. Your feet move in an elliptical pattern, and a flywheel with resistance you can vary controls the difficulty of the workout.

Treadmills are stepping up in the world. Features such as electronic programming, which varies the intensity of a workout, can help make exercise less of a chore—and even more fun. Indeed, more Americans regularly work out on a treadmill than on any other type of exercise machine.