The senators had outrun their coverage.

The tension-filled, high-stakes launch event of the "2008 Legislative Fitness Challenge" — OK, they walked briskly around the block outside the Capitol — was heading into the final turn Thursday morning with a trio of lawmakers in the lead. Ahead of an actual Atlanta Falcon.

"I'm giving them a head start," Ovie Mughelli, the team's 6-foot-1, 255-pound fullback, confided. "You gotta let other people win sometimes."

That's a somewhat unfamiliar sentiment under the Gold Dome, where partisan battling can grow as thick as the crowds around the buffet tables during the General Assembly session. If it's not the dizzying daily menu of luncheons and receptions being thrown by various legislator-courting groups, it's other nutritional hazards encountered in the course of doing the people's business.

"I walk through the [House] anteroom and there's Krispy Kreme donuts and cheese straws," sighed Rep. Tommy Benton (R-Jefferson). "It can be hard to resist."

To the casual observer, Benton looks to be in pretty good shape. Still, he signed up for the 30-day fitness challenge when a couple of Georgia Baptist nursing students volunteering for the cause waylaid him following the kickoff event.

After getting his John Hancock on the form — in which he pledged to wear a pedometer and track his daily step count — the students, Katie Allen and Jennifer Brummitt, directed him up the Capitol stairs (don't even think of taking the elevator!). There, a room with more information and — what else? — lunch awaited.

At least it was sandwiches from Subway, known for its ads starring Jared Fogle, who claims to have lost more than 200 pounds by consuming its lower-calorie offerings.

Meanwhile, there's a meaty message to the challenge, organized by the Georgia Coalition for Physical Activity and Nutrition and the Atlanta Falcons Youth Foundation to draw attention to youth fitness in Georgia. One of the primary speakers at the press conference, Sen. Joseph Carter (R-Tifton), introduced a bill last week that aims to curb childhood obesity by requiring schools to check students' body mass index (BMI) and offer physical education classes.

It was Carter, along with fellow senators Don Thomas (R-Dalton) and Ronnie Chance (R-Tyrone), who Mughelli genially let lead the walk around the Capitol. Walking is the whole point of the Challenge, which will award a trophy (hopefully not made of chocolate) to the top legislative stepper. The stated goal is 10,000 steps a day for each participant.

That shouldn't be that hard, considering that the Assembly's business sprawls across two buildings and many sweeping marble staircases. On the other hand, much of what our elected representatives do is stand still: To confer in the House and Senate chambers, to have their ears bent by lobbyists or to conduct impromptu meetings while waiting endlessly for elevators that occasionally arrive.

Still, they may already be in better shape than anyone thought.

"We do get a lot of exercise running from the press," quipped Chance.