If you live in the Triangle, you have discovered the fountain of youth.
A study of the 50 largest metro areas in the U.S. finds the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area is among the 10 “youngest” places in the country. The study, released today, looked at 52 factors and ranked the Triangle No. 8 nationally, just below No. 7 San Diego and just above No. 9 Minneapolis-St. Paul, in terms of how old we really are.
When the East Coast Greenway Alliance announced in February it was moving its headquarters from Rhode Island to the Triangle, the move was a good sign for the state — and a sign that we need help.
The Alliance is the driving force behind the East Coast Greenway, an in-the-works greenway that will one day run continuously from Key West, Fla., to Canada, a distance of nearly 3,000 miles. It bills itself as the urban alternative to the Appalachian Trail, offering a pedestrian-width ribbon of pavement instead natural surface and traveling through as many municipalities as possible, rather than avoiding them. More than 25 percent of the trail now exists. Problem is, the vast majority of the completed path lies well to the north.
For the past two weeks I’ve been hitting local bookstores to promote my just-released “Backpacking North Carolina” (UNC Press). I talk for a few minutes about the book, show a slide show if I can figure out the projector, and, in a new twist added last night at Quail Ridge Books & Music, cooked dinner. The highlight is when I pipe down and the audience starts talking.
Dry out this weekend by running over a bridge at the coast or through a warrior-making forest in the Piedmont. Or head to the mountains and get to know an experimental forest.
Coast
Technically, Saturday’s Run Like a Kid 2011 10K Bridge Run (and 5K and family run) is the inaugural Run Like a Kid across the bridge linking Morehead City with Atlantic City. But it’s not the first race across a bridge linking Morehead City and Atlantic City — though it may be the first on a bridge not at the bottom of the Intracoastal Waterway, which the bridge spans. That honor would go to Discovery Diving’s annual 4th of July Underwater Bike Race. That race is now run on the deck of the Indra, a landing craft repair ship intentionally sunk in 65 feet of water off the coast as part of the state’s artificial reef program. But in the early days, the underwater bike race was run atop the old bridge that once linked Morehead City and Atlantic Beach. But I digress … .
Overhauling one’s diet can be overwhelming, what with every little nutritional nuance to keep tabs on. This week, instead of trying to ride herd over every aspect of your eating, focus on one: added sugars.
A study presented at the American Heart Association‘s recent Nutrition, Physical Activity and Metabolism/Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention 2011 Scientific Sessions underscores what shouldn’t be surprising: added sugars contribute to weight gain. Data accumulated as part of the 27-year-long Minnesota Heart Survey, a surveillance study of adults ages 25 to 74 living in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area, showed a relationship between added sugars and body mass index. Seven surveys of the adults, ages 25 to 74, participating in the Minnesota Heart Survey were taken over its course, beginning in 1980. Here are the key findings: