The kids were doing the math, and the numbers weren’t coming up in Ben’s favor.
It was Sunday morning, around 9:30, and the fact that these 15-year-olds were able to do math at all was impressive. For most of the past 24 hours they’d been racing their mountain bikes at the appropriately named Dark Mountain near Wilkesboro, site of the 10th Annual Burn 24 Hour Challenge, a mountain bike race that began at noon Saturday and ran, straight through, until noon Sunday. During the past 12 1/2 hours, one of the 15-year-olds had thrown up twice during her middle-of-the-night shift-in-the saddle. One had severe stomach cramps early on after finishing a 7.4-mile lap on the hilly foothills course. One kept falling asleep in a camp chair and had to be awoken, for the third time, less than 10 minutes before his last lap. Yet at 9:30, working on maybe three hours sleep per person, their brains were working away.read more
Have trouble prying your kids from the computer screen to go for a bike ride or play in the yard? There’s an app for that. Or there will be if enough enterprising programmers heed the Apps for Healthy Kids competition being sponsored by First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! program.read more
Marcy chuckled at her computer screen. The wife was scouting upcoming runs, triathlons, bike rides — anything that might provide a carrot for getting out and training. “The Grueling Triathlon of Doom,” she said, letting me in on the joke.
Grueling Triathlon of Doom? Such truth in advertising, I thought. Triathletes are well-conditioned not to view what they do as “grueling,” nor to entertain notions of “doom.” My mind raced; shortly, my fingers followed, on my own keyboard to see what this Grueling Triathlon of Doom was all about.read more
I’d been trailing the woman for a few minutes when she decided to let me by. As I passed, she did a double take. “If I’d known you were a guy,” she said, “I would have let you pass sooner.”
Her comment backed a thought that had been developing over the past 10 miles: Women trail runners, as evidenced by the number who were reluctant to let me pass, are competitive. Very competitive.read more
I haven’t run in two weeks because of a twisted ankle, I can hardly breath because of the pollen, my feet are blistered from a 30-mile backpack trip earlier in the week, which didn’t do my knees any favors, either. And this morning at 8 I’m going out with more than 100 other runners on the inaugural Mountains-to-Sea Trail 12-mile Challenge. That’s 12 miles on the rocky, rooty, twisty, turny Falls Lake section of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail.read more