Jogger Clinton Plods His Way to Fitness : Health: Observers declare that the President is not out there to shatter records--he’s just burning off a burger and saying hello to folks.

Kristina Emanuels was jogging early one morning when she came face to face with President Clinton, his trademark baseball cap pulled low, huffing and puffing near the Lincoln Memorial.

“Morning,” the Office of Management and Budget analyst said.

“Hi,” the red-faced President replied.

As Emanuels can attest, Clinton is not out there to shatter records. He’s just burning off a burger and saying hello to folks.

The jogging President has become a familiar sideshow in early morning Washington. Clad in baggy jog togs, he plods his way toward fitness.

In that sense, the President’s jog is endearing: Like millions of other Americans, Citizen Clinton labors along, waging his own battle of the bulge.

Rarely has a president’s exercise routine been so keenly chronicled. President George Bush was a jogger, but he generally kept to out-of-the-way tracks or used an exercise bike.

Clinton largely shuns his made-to-order $30,000 jogging track in favor of Washington’s busiest commuter arteries, jogging past its imposing monuments and along its riverfront.

Early morning finds him running alongside other joggers, through clumps of tourists and past groundskeepers, military men and mid-level bureaucrats.

He draws astonished shouts of “The President!” or mere nods from the blase.

With him always is an entourage of Secret Service agents as well as two vans full of reporters and photographers who dutifully capture the First Workout on film and pepper him with questions.

These he can ignore.

Clinton rolls his eyes, shrugs, smiles blithely. A typical exchange:

Reporter: “Can you break the filibuster?”

Clinton: “We’ll see.”

There are awkward moments too. Two of Clinton’s favorite routes pass makeshift homeless encampments atop steaming grates. Earlier in the year, Clinton waved and the homeless waved back and hollered. Now they seem to have grown used to each other; Clinton runs on the other side of the street, and the homeless pay him little attention.

Clinton’s regular jog has created a new Washington status symbol: the Power Sweat. He has jogged with members of Congress, the mayor of Boston, the president of a North Carolina college, a couple of cousins, friends from Arkansas and singer Judy Collins. Most of them are treated to an informal tour of the Oval Office afterward.

Clinton makes no pretense of being a hard-core fitness buff. But the numbers show he is getting quicker and stronger: He runs three to five miles, at a clip of about eight minutes a mile.

“Those times put him squarely in the middle of the pack among our readers, who regard themselves as pretty serious runners,” said Amby Burfoot, executive editor of Runner’s World magazine.