You’ve seen people jogging on the greenway or plodding away on the treadmill, oblivious to all but the ear buds pumping a driving beat into their ears. And, according to science, pumping an extra boost of juice into their workout. The American Council on Exercise recently reviewed seven studies conducted since 1999 that all agreed that listening to music has a positive impact on your workout. (There’s a caveat, but first the facts.)
Weekend plans? Hike to learn, run for fun
Cool weather returns to North Carolina this weekend, making for good hiking at the coast and the mountains, with frightfully fun running in between.
Coast
Mid- to late fall, in my humble opinion the best time to explore the coast. Temperatures have dropped enough that bugs — and snakes! — are less of a problem, yet they haven’t dropped enough to seriously affect the greenery. Lots to see, fewer things to distract you from seeing them. That’s why our pick for the coast this weekend is the Biological Wonderland hike at Carolina Beach State Park. Carolina Beach has a diverse plant community, from its pine savannas to its carnivorous plants. Let an in-the-know park ranger fill you in on this Saturday morning hike that leaves from the nature trail parking lot at 10 a.m.
New River Trail: 57 miles of bike trail less than 3 hours away
The physical therapist hesitated, then issued his edict. “Maybe. If it’s a short hike. And if the trail doesn’t have a lot of rocks.” He hesitated again, “I dunno … .”
“What a bike ride?” I asked.
It was Marcy’s first meeting with a PT to deal with a nagging case of planter fasciitis. She’d been hobbled off and on by the annoying muscle irritation; her most recent flair-up courtesy of a walk-to-run program. We were at Cary Orthopaedic’s Performance Therapy unit — because past experience revealed they were just as interested as we were in getting us moving again as soon as possible. PT Kevin Raymond was on board with that, he just wanted to make sure Marcy didn’t go out too fast.
Your next race: train hot, train consistently, take a calculator
News from the lab coat world that could aid your performance:
Hot workouts, cool results: You know this blazing hot, record-setting summer we just endured? The one when every workout seemed like it was taking place in an equatorial rain forest under a sunlamp? If you gutted out your summer workouts, you should be an animal in fall’s cooler weather.
A greenway ride into the future
Friday’s Cross Triangle Greenway bike ride showed just how far the Triangle’s greenway system has come — and how far it has to go.
The ride was the first of what promises to be an annual event. The ride — a 39-mile excursion from the N.C. Museum of Art in Raleigh to the entertainment Mecca of downtown Durham (American Tobacco Complex, Durham Bulls Athletic Park, Durham Performing Arts Center, the jail) was intended to show how a dream of 40 years — of being able to ride a bike on greenway from Raleigh to the heart of Durham — is ever-so-close to being reality. About 75 percent of Friday’s ride was off-road: starting on the Reedy Creek Greenway in Raleigh, winding through Umstead State Park (save for an odd “short-cut” that had us mixing it up with lunchtime traffic on Harrison Avenue and Weston Parkway) down Cary’s Black Creek and White Oak Creek greenways and on to the American Tobacco Trail for the 22-mile (plus or minus) ride into downtown Durham.