For the third year, Triangle athletes have an easy trip to USA Triathlon's April 24-25 National Duathlon Festival - less than three hours' drive to Richmond, Va. - but if you're planning to enter, you should hurry.

Registration for the run-bike-run competition already is near last
year's total of more than 1,700 entrants, USA Triathlon said. (The
schedule is below.)

Entries for the featured event, the USAT Duathlon Age Group National Championship - a 5K run, a 38K bike ride and a finishing 5K run -  on Tuesday reached 1,121, and entries for all events had totaled 1,432.

Longtime bike mechanic Matt Loder opens his own practice.

Daylight Saving Time starting earlier than it has in 35 years this year — Sunday — offers a double bonus at your local state park, recreation area or natural area (Umstead, Eno River, Falls Lake, Jordan Lake, Occonneechee Mountain locally). You don't just get one hour of added after-work daylight, but you get two more hours to spend it in a North Carolina state park, or recreation area, or natural area. Starting yesterday, the parks began closing at 8 p.m. (since November, they had been closing at 6 p.m.)

Enjoy the extra two hours.

Hour-long class should help make your ride glide.

First ride under the lights is Friday.

What opening our state parks earlier means to North Carolina's role in the global economy. Sorta.

I walked out the door of my sister's Denver townhome, walked three
blocks through a maze of townhomes, then climbed a rise and picked up a
greenway that I could have walked, literally, for days. In a region
where the state lottery funds greenspace statewide — $2 billion since
1983 — and is responsible for creating thousands of miles of trail, the
High Line Canal Trail remains unique.

Alas, every once in a while I'm privy to a new event that I am not at liberty to share immediately. Such is the case with this Sunday's inaugural "How Slow Can You Go?" Hill Climb, which —

Well dang, I just shared that, didn't I? OK, I reckon I'm not in trouble as long as I don't divulge the location. Suffice it to say that the event is "a timed bike ride featuring 80 vertical feet as slow as you can go without dabbing." (No doubt I was chosen to receive this email announcement via a very well-targeted mailing list.) This emerging event appears to be, in part, an attempt to fill the pre-Superbowl wacky bike event created when the annual Soup Bowl Duathlon folded a couple years back. A welcome addition, I say. (Provided it doesn't turn out like this.)

I'm off to practice my track stand. I'll report back on the HSCYGHC should I participate

Tim Lee with TORC informs us that the staff of The Spin Cycle will be fetted following TORC's monthly membership meeting on Feb. 4. If you didn't get to say goodbye to the crew during the revered Cary bike shop's going-out-of-business sale last week, here's your chance. Social hour begins at 6 p.m., the meeting at 7; more socialness follows at 8. The meeting is at the Carolina Brewery in Pittsboro. It's also a good opportunity to catch up on the latest in Triangle mountain biking circles.

Kevin Coggins probably wouldn't mind at all if you care to buy him a beer. 

Today's Fit column
addresses the virtues of playing at night, especially come winter when
daylight is at a premium. In this space for the next couple of days
we'll look at specific ways we play after dark. Today: Night mountain
biking.