GetGoing NC!

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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, [...]

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.
* * *
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 [...]

Ride the Divide insights from Matthew Lee

Following Thursday’s screening of “Ride the Divide” in Carrboro, endurance mountain bike racer Matthew Lee answered questions about the race. Some quick highlights:

The Cannondale bike he rode for 2,700 miles (200,000 total feet of climbing) weighed just 35 pounds. “Just,” because the Ride the Divide is a self-supported race — Lee had to carry everything [...]

“Ride the Divide” — a 2,700-mile off-road odyssey

There’s one key difference between “Race Across the Sky,” last year’s documentary on the Leadville 100, an epic mountain bike race two miles above sea level, and the just-released “Ride the Divide,” which chronicles a lesser-known, 2,700-mile race that follows the Continental Divide from Banff, Alberta, Canada, south to the Mexican border. I’ll get to [...]

Reminder: Saturday is National Trails Day

I’m back to remind you that Saturday is National Trails Day, a day when we celebrate the more than 200,000 miles of trail that help us escape the oppressive monotony of day-to-day existence and recoup our souls.
OK, maybe that’s a little strong.
But trails do play a vital role in our physical and mental well being. [...]

Beer for butter, unprotected support and other insights from the Burn 24

I haven’t counted how many racers from the Triangle were in this past weekend’s Burn 24 Hour Challenge mountain bike race at Dark Mountain near Wilkesboro, but I couldn’t walk from our pit to the start/finish without running into someone from hereabouts. These are a few of the stories I picked up along the way. [...]

24 hours of guts

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 [...]