Monday — never an easy time for the outdoors enthusiast. After a weekend of adventure, returning to the humdrum work-a-day world can make one melancholy. To help ease the transition, every Monday we feature a 90 Second Escape — essentially, a 90-second video of a place you’d probably rather be: a trail, a park, a greenway, a lake … anywhere as long as it’s not under a fluorescent bulb. Today’s…
“Are you excited? I’m excited.” Marcy gave me a curious look. OK, so this wasn’t my event. I wasn’t the one who would be swimming 225 yards, riding my bike 9 miles, then running 2 on Sunday at the Finley YMCA in North Raliegh. Still, the pre-race clinic we’d just sat in on for Sunday’s Ramblin’ Rose Raleigh triathlon had gotten my competitive juices flowing. Ramblin’ Rose Raleigh is one…
I was talking to Steven Wheelock, a wellness instructor at Rex Wellness in Raleigh, about stretching for a story coming soon to a McClatchy Newspaper (Charlotte Observer/News & Observer) near you when he sought to put the practice in perspective by anatomizing the four phases of the workout: 1. Stretching/warmup, 2. Evaluation period, 3. The workout itself, 4. Cool down. 1, 3 and 4, I was familiar with but 2…
Got a plan for this year? If you don’t, you need one. If you vowed to be better this year, you need to start planning. You need goals to move you along. You need a carrot to get you out of bed and ride on a morning when it’s 25 degrees out. You need incentive to lace up your Asics and do your weekly track workout when your body is…
I was thinking I’d just had a bad day on the wall. Then I opened my climbing journal to record my workout and discovered that my last workout, a week earlier, had been “a bad day.” Likewise, the workout before that, during the week between Christmas and New Year’s, had been “somewhat aimless.” Aimless and anti-productive, I discovered upon further review: Had it really been nearly two months since I’d…
Chase a kite at the coast, follow fall color in the Piedmont, ride a unicycle in the mountains … North Carolina gives you all kinds of options this weekend. Coast One of the best workouts going is a day at the beach: Chasing kids into the water, getting chased out of the water by a rogue (waist-high) wave, building sand castle fortresses (upper body workout). Something about the beach just…
There’s something for everyone in North Carolina this weekend: a triathlon at the coast, looking down for fall color in the Piedmont, taking the Great Pumpkin Mountain Challenge in the high country. Coast Thought your triathlon season was over? How about one last event — this Saturday’s Emerald Isle Triathlon. This is a slightly longer sprint distance tri: 750 meter swim in the Atlantic, 19.3k out-and-back bike ride along NC…
It’s a great weekend to learn something new. Coast Here’s a race I wish I’d known about three months ago: the Kure Beach Double Sprint Triathlon, billed as the “very first Formula 1 or super sprint style triathlon in the U.S.” Double Sprint? Formula 1? It’s basically this: start with a 375-meter ocean swim, run 1.5 miles to a transition area, do a 10K bike ride on a closed course…
This is the fourth of four stories this week on triathlons, specifically the increasingly popular sprint variety. Tuesday: Triathlon by the numbers Wednesday: The growing popularity of sprint triathlons Thursday: Kim Feth’s story: From walking around her living room to finishing her first sprint tri eight months later. Today: Gerald Babao’s story: Trying to out swim, out bike, out run cancer. Gerald Babao is matter-of-fact about what motivated him to…
This is the third of four posts this week on sprint triathlons. Tuesday: Triathlon by the numbers Wednesday: The growing popularity of sprint triathlons Today: Kim Feth’s story: From walking around her living room to finishing her first sprint tri eight months later. Friday: Gerald Babao’s story: Trying to out swim, out bike, out run cancer. At first, it seems like curious logic: A marathon is too much, I’ll do…