Dry out this weekend by running over a bridge at the coast or through a warrior-making forest in the Piedmont. Or head to the mountains and get to know an experimental forest.
Coast
Technically, Saturday’s Run Like a Kid 2011 10K Bridge Run(and 5K and family run) is the inaugural Run Like a Kid across the bridge linking Morehead City with Atlantic City. But it’s not the first race across a bridge linking Morehead City and Atlantic City — though it may be the first on a bridge not at the bottom of the Intracoastal Waterway, which the bridge spans. That honor would go to Discovery Diving’s annual 4th of July Underwater Bike Race. That race is now run on the deck of the Indra, a landing craft repair ship intentionally sunk in 65 feet of water off the coast as part of the state’s artificial reef program. But in the early days, the underwater bike race was run atop the old bridge that once linked Morehead City and Atlantic Beach. But I digress … .read more
This weekend highlights some of the best North Carolina has to offer in the outdoors.
Coast
Not long ago, a biathlon/duathlon typically meant running and swimming. More and more, it can mean pretty much anything. Such as running and paddleboarding.
That’s the case at Saturday’s Wrightsville Beach Biathlon, where participants will depart from the dock harbor side at the Blockade Runner, paddle four miles through Banks Channel, hop off the board and run four miles ending on the ocean front at the Blockade Runner. The race kicks off at 9 a.m., proceeds benefit StandUp for a Clean Ocean read more
Run, paddle, ski in your shorts. They’re all options this weekend.
Coast
It may be too late to sign up (let alone train) for the 2nd Annual Quintiles Wrightsville Beach Marathon, but you’ve probably got at least a 5K in you. Just south of Wrightsville Beach, in Carolina Beach, you’ll find the 7th Annual Steve Haydu St. Patricks Lo-Tide Run benefiting one or more cancer patients and their families. (If you’ve got more than a 5K in you there’s a 10K as well.) Starts on the beach, ends on the beach. Registration starts at 7 a.m., the 10K at 8:45, 5k at 9. $27. Go here for more details.read more
The Triangle’s greenway system is a tiny step closer to becoming a complete network.
Joe Godfrey, parks planner with the Town of Cary, tells GGNC that a 1.3-mile missing link of the Black Creek Greenway should be finished mid-April. The stretch would extend the existing 5.6 miles of Black Creek Greenway running south from Lake Crabtree to Chapel Hill Road on to Maynard Road. A short stretch of the sidewalk/greenway will run alongside Maynard before it crosses High House Road. From there, Godfrey says another short missing link should begin construction soon and will link with existing greenway into the heart of Bond Park.read more
Last fall, I volunteered as a mentor for the Fit-tastic walk-to-run program sponsored by The Athlete’s Foot in Raleigh’s Cameron Village. It was the same program that had resuscitated my running career a year earlier (and the one I had written about a year before that while still at The News & Observer). Mentoring, I figured, was the least I could do for a program that had helped reunite me with a love lost for more than 20 years.read more