Weird weather (Friday snow in the mountains?) precedes a mellow, springlike weekend. A weekend good for so many adventures, from heeding the advice of Edgar Winter and taking a free ride to gazing into the night sky.
Coast
A satellite view of the eastern seaboard at night is startling not so much for the artificial light that illuminates the region, but for the one spot that remains dark: far eastern North Carolina. A blink here and there, but mostly darkness. One night around 11, lying on a gravel road just outside Columbia, we saw the Milky Way with nearly the clarity I’d seen it years earlier camping at 9,000 feet in the Rockies.read more
Sunny skies, temperatures in the 50s! By gum, that’s the way winter is supposed to be! And that’s how it will be this weekend, perfect weather for a 5K, a family nature hike and more.
Coast
It’s early in the season, you want to start logging races, but PRs aren’t a concern. Sure, you want a decent time — as a baseline for 2017, if nothing else — but really, you want to get back into the groove of the 5K. The camaraderie, the pageantry, the fun. And if you happen to score a podium in your age group … .read more
Labor Day weekend — the last hurrah of summer. Make sure you make the most of it.
Coast | Coastal Plain
Any event of athletic endurance should end with a flourish. Few end with the flourish of the Go Jump in the Lake 5K, 10K and 15 K in Boiling Springs.read more
Excuses to get moving can be easy to dream up. But this weekend? No excuses.
Coast / Coastal Plain
If you’ve vowed to do at least one race this summer and have procrastinated, you have no excuse not to do Sunday’s Summer Sizzler at Wilmington’s Greenfield Lake. A 10K? you whine. That’s too far in this summer heat.
There’s also a 5K. My hip flexor has been acting up. I don’t think I can hold back my competitive nature — I’ll re-injure myself.
There’s a 1-mile fun run. Oh … .
Another reason you can’t refuse? It’s the first in a three-race series that includes the First Bank Octoberfest 15K at Brunswick Forest on Sept. 25 and the Battleship Half Marathon Nov. 6. Start building your endurance on Sunday.read more
There’s a team run (5K or 10K, your choice) at the coast, a colorful run in the Piedmont and a run to register for limited space on a Lake James waterfowl tour.
Coast: St. Patrick’s Day Lo Tide Run
The 12th annual Steve Haydu St. Patrick’s Day Lo Tide Run on Saturday offers an intriguing twist for both the 5K and 10K: team competition. Each team must have five or more runners, teams will be scored based on their top five runners. The hardest part of this event could be coming up with a worthy team name; teams so far include Shaggers for a Cure, Love is Bald and Fat and Stinky. Registration lasts until the morning of the race, so you’ve got time.read more
