When I last talked with Gilbert Anderson more than five years ago he had just relocated his eclectic North Road Bicycle Imports from downtown Raleigh to Yanceyville and was just getting unpacked. When we dropped by his downtown Yanceyville shop Saturday he was … still getting unpacked. The reason wouldn’t surprise anyone who knows the affable Anderson: Distract him with his favorite topic — bikes, especially unusual ones — and he’ll stop what he’s doing and embark on a discourse that may bounce from internal hubs to belt drives to ultralight steel frames of the ‘70s, to why road racing was banned in England to the latest cycling sensation. All, seemingly, in the same breath.
North Carolina’s pockets of activity
At first read, the news from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sounds none-to-good for the Old North State: “Americans who live in parts of Appalachia and the South are the least likely to be physically active in their leisure time … .” Read on, though, and you discover that Alabama, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Tennessee are the prime offenders. “In those states, physical inactivity rates are 29.2 percent or greater for more than 70 percent of the counties.” By “physical inactivity” they mean these people get no exercise outside of their regular jobs (which could be sedentary as well). The national average, as of 2008, was 25.4 percent, meaning a quarter of Americans get no leisure exercise
Take the back door into Middle Prong Wilderness
Wilderness areas shouldn’t be the private domain of only the most intrepid swashbuckling types who have no compunction about pushing through where the trail disappears, about fording waist-deep streams, about scrambling through rhododendron hells ever-so-deserving of the name. They shouldn’t be their private playground and they needn’t be. Provided you know how to get in the back door.
Hey gals, have a (healthy) heart
When I go to the gym and get my vitals checked, the first two things I look at — before my weight, before my percentage of body fat, before my BMI — are my blood pressure and pulse. I figure if my resting heart rate is low (typically in the low 50s, though I long for the day when I dip into the upper 40s and achieve “athlete” status) and my blood pressure is good (I shoot for 110/70). Not bad numbers for a 54-year-old guy.
How often is she working out?
Wondering where you fit in the How-often-is everyone-else-working-out? scheme of things?
Even if you don’t think of yourself as competitive, the thought probably does cross your mind. Especially if you’ve only recently embarked on an exercise program and it seems like other newcomers you know are losing more weight, keeping up better in Pilates, suddenly shopping the petite section. Are they working out three times a week? Four? Three times a day seven days a week!?