Sunny skies, temperatures in the 50s! By gum, that’s the way winter is supposed to be! And that’s how it will be this weekend, perfect weather for a 5K, a family nature hike and more.
Coast
It’s early in the season, you want to start logging races, but PRs aren’t a concern. Sure, you want a decent time — as a baseline for 2017, if nothing else — but really, you want to get back into the groove of the 5K. The camaraderie, the pageantry, the fun. And if you happen to score a podium in your age group … .read more
Mountains-to-Sea Trail along Falls Lake, on a true winter’s day.
I miss winter.
I realized just how much on Sunday when I found myself in need of a second layer. Light gloves wouldn’t have been bad, either. Or a hat. There’d been snow a ways back, I recalled, and it was cold for a couple days after. But since? I couldn’t recall the last time a hike had started in 30-degree weather.read more
Carolina Beach State Park along the Cape Fear River
The natural world presents many questions in winter. This weekend, you have a chance to learn many answers.
Coast
When you head to the coast, hiking often isn’t atop your list of things to do. It should be, especially this time of year. The bugs are at bay (or at least at a minimum), the temperatures aren’t stifling, and, perhaps most significantly, it is serene, the calm before the summer crowds descend.read more
Photo courtesy Great Outdoor Provision Co. and GetHiking! Charlottesville hike leader Pepper E.
News that the company that designs crash-test dummies has bulked up its replicas to better reflect a … growing America — creating a dummy that weighs 273 pounds compared to the previous 167-pounder — immediately made me think, of course, of hiking. If these crash-test dummies had been out hiking instead of parked behind the wheel, they no doubt could retain their svelte, under-35 BMI physiques of just 20 years ago.
The plight of the corpulent crash-test dummies was a reminder that we fail to appreciate that, in addition to clearing our minds, when we hit the trail it’s doing our bodies a world of good. First, as underscored by the dummies, hiking can play a key role in controlling weight. Consider: A 180-pound person burns about 500 calories an hour on a vigorous hike (throw on a 30-pound pack and that figure climbs over 650 calories per hour). Granted, we need to replace some of those calories to keep fueled, but still, that’s some serious calorie burning.
Other examples of how hiking can improve your health:read more
February is a great time for runners to establish a baseline. Perhaps you’ve been training for month now, you’re eager to see where you are, where you need to be. That said, we present three great options to do just that, with either a trail run at the coast, a greenway run in the Piedmont, or a road race in the mountains.read more
