When she's not running around the set of ER, Kellie Martin is prepping for the L.A. Marathon. Photographed by Jon Ragel (*note: most small images can be enlarged)

ellie Martin is taking this marathon thing pretty seriously. The day we catch up with her, she's on a route that takes her from New York City through a midwestern town and finally into the bustling emergency room of Chicago's County General Hospital. Okay, so she's sneaking in a 20-minute jog around the Warner Brother's Studio lot during a lunch break from the set of the hit television show ER. But she knows that if she's ever going to be ready for-let alone finish-the L.A. Marathon in March, she has to stay on top of her workouts.

Martin started running during her sophomore year at Yale. "New Haven's not the safest area in the world," she explains, "so I didn't run very far- just two or three miles at a time." These days, however, the 24-year-old lives in the San Fernando Valley, where the only things she worries about while running are hungry mountain lions-or a crowd of rabid fans trying to spy on neighbor (and former costar) George Clooney. It was another coworker, Anthony Edwards, who inspired her to take up long-distance running when he was training for the Chicago Marathon. "He was always talking about running," she says. "I got to thinking [that a marathon] might be a good thing." But building a training regimen around 10-hour workdays called for a specialist-stat. So Martin enlisted the help of L.A.-based trainer Jim Garfield.

"We started with a 30-minute run, three times a week. The next week, we increased it to 40 minutes," explains Garfield. To strengthen Martin's legs, they do lunges and step-ups after each run. Every three weeks they'll add on one more day of running. Soon, Martin will be running six to eight miles a day, five days a week- plus a longer run (eventually as many as 22 miles) on the sixth day. Garfield also referred her to a nutritionist to make sure her eating habits support her training regimen.

Martin's long-term fitness goal, however, goes beyond how many miles she can log. "I keep reminding myself that I need to be healthy as opposed to thin," she says. "That's a really hard lesson to learn, being an actress."

Call off the psych consult.

-Joey_Bartolomeo

step-ups "On a trail, you deal with whatever's in front of you," says Martin. Even a boulder can become a piece of training equipment. After her run, she steps on and off a rock for 3 sets of 20 reps on each side, strengthening glutes, quadriceps and hamstrings.


On to the next page (part two)