In today’s The News & Observer, I write about Team Bandwidth.com’s experience in Race Across America, the 3,004-mile bike race from Oceanside, Calif., to Annapolis, Md., that TB.com won (competing in the four-person team division), covering the distance in 6 days, 3 hours and 9 minutes. Here are more details on TB’s experience. (Probably makes more sense if you read the main story first, then come back here for more insights.)
Category Archives: Cycling
14 hours, 35 minutes, 14 seconds: Use it all
Today is the longest day of the year.
OK, so technically, at 14 hours, 35 minutes and 14 seconds of daylight there’s only one second of daylight more than there was yesterday and three more than there will be tomorrow. And we won’t be seeing appreciable changes in the length of day until late August. But spiritually, emotionally, physically, it’s important to know that today you have 14 hours, 35 minutes and 14 seconds of daylight (or 15 hours, 35 minutes and 14 seconds if you count civil twilight) to work with. Taking full advantage of that 14 hours, 35 minutes and 14 seconds, you could, conceivably:
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.