My slogan as a guidebook writer: I get lost so you don’t have to.
Yet in the case of London Bald, there’s no guarantee that even my most meticulous directions, derived from wandering 20 miles in less than 24 hours with GPS and maps in hand, will spare you from a similar bushwhacking fate in the rugged Nantahala National Forest. For London Bald, like the 26-mile Appletree Camp trail network it’s a part of, is in a National Forest, and when you step foot on a National Forest trail, anything can happen.read more
Ultra-endurance events can be bad for your heart. Or maybe not.
That undefinitive statement comes courtesy of contradictory studies both reported Aug. 31 on the Science Daily site. We’ll start with the up(heart)beat report.
The Karolinska Institutet and the Swedish School of Sport and Health Sciences studied 15 athletes (12 males, three females) at the Adventure Racing World Championships. The event covered 800 kilometers in the disciplines of mountain biking, trekking, kayaking and in-line skating and took about six days, with competitors essentially going nonstop for 150 hours at an average work intensity, measured in terms of VO2 peak, of 40 percent. Before and after the event, the athletes were assessed to see how their hearts responded. While some of the athletes registered increased levels of certain blood markers, suggestive of cardiac damage, immediately after the race, those markers were back to normal within 24 hours. Researchers believe the spike wasn’t the result of cardiac damage, but rather the body’s way of protecting and regulating growth. Further, the athletes who finished strongest and did the best had the least affected hearts.read more
Last week I ran into my old Fit-tastic coach, Tim Clark. Tim helped me in my return to running last year, coaxing and pushing me through the Monster Dash 5K. We chatted, I mentioned that I was doing today’s Magnificent Mile in downtown Raleigh.
Congratulations to the cyclists of Chapel Hill and Durham, who now live in Bike Friendly Communities.
That’s according to the League of American Bicyclists, which bestows its BFC honor on communities that have made an effort to make cycling safe, not suicidal. Chapel Hill and Durham made the list for the first time this fall, earning Bronze status (out of a possible Silver, Gold, and the coveted Platinum, of which there are only three designated communities: Boulder, Colo.; Davis, Calif.; Portland, Ore.). In the Triangle, they join Carrboro, which has been on the list since 2004 and is one of only 28 Silver communities nationwide, and Bronze Cary, a 2003 inductee. Elsewhere in North Carolina, Charlotte, Davidson and Greensboro are all Bronze BFCs.read more