Arkansas Cycling & Fitness :: News - SYNC

Hit the trails
The metro has mountain biking spots for newbies and experts alike.
By Shea Stewart
Wednesday, July 9, 2008

It’s 7:45 on an overcast weekday morning, and the rat race is slowly inching southward on Interstate 30 over the Arkansas River. But I’m free, cruising northward, heading toward Burns Park and an early morning mountain biking rendezvous.
Since training for and completing the 50-mile Tour de Rock, I’ve been typecast as Sync’s cyclist, and glancing across I-30 to the mass of vehicles stuck in morning rush-hour traffic, I’m okay with that.
While the Arkansas River Trail offers the perfect training ground for road cyclists, there is an abundance of off-road opportunities for mountain bikers in Little Rock and the surrounding area as well. I’ve been charged with riding five of central Arkansas’ mountain bike trails — Burns Park, Allsop Park, Boyle Park, Mills Park and Camp Robinson — and comparing and contrasting the trails I pedal from a beginner’s point of view.

Burns Park

The 1,575-acre Burns Park in North Little Rock offers countless trails for beginners and experts alike, with a nice mixture of steep climbs and descents as well as flat loops. Parts of the trails can be rocky and laced with roots, fun for the advanced rider, while other loops of single track simply wind through the woods.
Since it was my first time on a mountain bike in about four years, my “coach,” Dan Lysk, organization manager with Arkansas Cycling and Fitness, threw in a mixture of climbs and tight descents along with twisty loops around the flat land. Although Lysk and I mosey through the most of the trails going about 7 mph, Lysk reports that when he is racing through the park as part of the Arkansas Mountain Bike Championship Series his speed can reach 20 mph to 25 mph.

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