Usually when you think of taking an escape into the wild, you assume a long drive to an obscure trail that navigates rugged terrain, frequently loses its way through dense undergrowth, involves waist-deep stream crossings and surprises you with wild critters at every opportunity. With the Lower Haw River Trail, located on the outskirts of the booming Triangle, you get all of that without the long drive.
Cyclists going long
There’s a good chance that a team of four cyclists from Cary-based Bandwidth.com will live up to their slogan of “5 and Change” and finish Race Across America (a k a RAAM) sometime today. There’s a similarly good chance that by day’s end Carrboro endurance mountain bike racer Matthew Lee will continue to lead this year’s Tour Divide.
Cycling: It’s not all about the workout
On Memorial Day, I was on a two-hour ride into the Wake County countryside. At the light on Green Hope High School Road and NC 55, a retro-ish looking Trek tandem pulled up next to me, dad in the pilot’s seat, son behind him in the stoker’s seat. “My son’s autistic,” the dad began. “This is a great way for us to get out and explore together.” Their rides, he said, were generally in the 20- to 25-mile range and inevitably wound up at McDonald’s. The two couldn’t have looked more content.
Durham’s Solite Park: a Gateway to inner city mountain biking
Problem: Most mountain bike trails are located away from residential areas, making them difficult for carless kids to get to.
Solution: Build mountain bike trails closer to where kids live so they can ride to the trailhead.
Granted, that would seem to fall into the “No ‘duh” category. But because mountain bike trails take up some territory, making urban trails happen isn’t as easy as it sounds. Postage stamp-size urban parks tend to have their turf eaten up pretty quickly with playgrounds, basketball courts and a ball field or two. Often, though, there are scraps of unused parklands that can be put to recreational use. That’s why the International Mountain Bicycling Association started its Gateway Trails program, a program that last week added it’s first Triangle entry, at Durham’s Solite Park.
A Monday cyclism
I’m a more obsessed than usual today with cycling. I’ll explain why in a moment. First, an observation or three from the cycling realm.
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Being honest about your shortcomings is an admirable trait in anyone, let alone a pro athlete. Humility among our elite athletes is a rare commodity. Sure, an air of confidence is good, but too often athletes become taken more with PR than performance, and if lucrative endorsements are about anything, they’re about style rather than substance. Which is why Lance Armstrong’s observation following his disappointing finish in Saturday’s Tour de Suisse prologue was especially refreshing. The 4.7-mile time trial was run on wet streets, and Armstrong didn’t pull any punches in admitting that riding fast on wet roads is a weakness.