It’s one of those weekends in North Carolina where you wish you could triplicate yourself … .
Coast
When anyone asks me for a good beginner canoe trip with great scenery, I never hesitate with the answer: Merchants Millpond State Park. For starters, it’s one of the few places in the state where you can rent a canoe year-round. Then, it’s only $5 an hour (that’s for the first hour; it drops to $3 an hour for the second and subsequent hours). But the main reason to paddle Merchants Millpond is the scenery. Paddling here is on a 190-year-old, 760-acre millpond peppered with bald cypress and tupelo gum trees draped in Spanish moss. The pond’s dark, acidic waters support floating mats of duckweed and water fern. It’s the quintessential swamp paddle minus the alligators (it’s been years since one has been seen).read more
There are hundreds of miles of greenways in North Carolina. But unless one runs through your neighborhood, chances are you don’t know where they are.
Despite their popularity and growing prominence, there is no one single source for greenways in North Carolina. As I’ve mentioned, GetGoingNC.com is working on that; hopefully, in a month or so we’ll have some progress to announce on that front. Until then, I’ll share my list of Web sites detailing greenways throughout the state. Included is a quick thumbnail; click on the destination for more info.read more
Charlie Spencer Lackey was facing stomach surgery last fall that she was hoping to avoid. She suffers from gastroesophageal reflux disease, more commonly referred to as GERD; her doctor mentioned one option that could preempt surgery: start exercising, lose some weight. Eager as she was to avoid the surgery, another malady made exercise a challenge.read more
Today, an argument in three parts for why playing games is good for you.
Games are good, Exhibit A: ‘Exergames’ beat a treadmill
A study published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine found that some interactive video games are a good way for kids to burn calories. The study took 39 kids, average age 11, and put them in front of interactive video games to see how much energy they burned. But first, to establish an exercise baseline, they had the kids walk on a treadmill at 3 miles per hour to establish their metabolic equivalent (MET), an approximation of how much oxygen the body uses during an activity. The kids measured an average MET of 4.9 on that activity.
Here’s how the games compared (the higher the number, the better; for the sake of you adults, “light” gardening has an MET of 2, running an 8 mile-per-minute pace — that would be a roughly 24-minute 5K — pulls a 13.5):read more
Yesterday, our look at the volunteers who make possible every run, triathlon, road bike ride, mountain bike race, adventure race — whatever kind of amateur competition you can think of — left off with a bevy of helpers trying to help an ailing 42-year-old Richard McKnight of Arizona finish the last five miles of the Umstead 100 endurance race. Today, a look at more of the 300-plus volunteers who made the Umstead 100, held April 2 and 3, happen — and whether they could help get McKnight to the finish.read more