By:SUSAN LIN
Israel Shalomoff, a stock broker when working, is unemployed right now. The good news is, that gives the Atlantic Beach native time to go mountain biking two or three times a week.
From the apartment where he now lives in Hoboken, N.J., Shalomoff often returns to Long Island, driving the hour and a half to Stillwell Woods in Syosset. "It's the best in our location" for mountain biking, he said.
Shalomoff said he favors that particuar trail because it's the most challenging one in the area. "You get deep in the forest there, and it's just the woods. The trail is only two feet wide, just enough for one bike to go through. It's [certainly] not riding on the street," he said.
The Stillwell Woods trail is rated "intermediate to advanced" by the Concerned Long Island Mountain Bicyclists (C.L.I.M.B.), the Woodbury-based volunteer organization that originally laid out and now helps maintain the biking path. C.L.I.M.B.'s Web site adds that the trail is about 4 miles long and runs in a loop that brings you back to the starting point.
Shalomoff and friends usually finish Stillwell in an hour and a half. "The challenge is to be able to make it up the uphills," he said. And he defined "making it" as not having to get off your bike part way and carry it up the hill. That's been known to happen to some riders on parts of the trail heading upward, because "even at the lowest gear, it's killing you."
Being able to do the uphills involves more than just physical strength or technical knowledge, Shalomoff said. "It's all endurance. People who don't ride as often as I do, you can see them get fired up at the beginning. They're trying to go fast, but by the end" they have nothing left.
"The best thing is to be able to kill the whole trail at a good speed the whole way through. That's what makes the difference, I think, between a good mountain biker" and a bad one, said Shalomoff, who is 28.
For mountain-biking newbies or those who want to "check out nature," Shalomoff mentioned there are also the two alternative mountain-biking trails in the area: the Nassau-Suffolk Greenbelt trail, accessible either via Bethpage State Park, Stillwell Woods or by the parking area on Route 25 in Woodbury, just east of Pathmark supermarket, and the Bethpage trail, accessible from the picnic area at Bethpage State Park.
Unlike Stillwell, the Greenbelt and Bethpage trails, said Shalomoff, are "wide and flat. It's just a path. They swerve a bit, but it's easy riding." Most of the trail is made of packed dirt.
C.L.I.M.B.'s Web site describes the 8-mile Greenbelt trail as "intermediate to advanced, with some challenging hills." The Bethpage trail, at 12 miles, is rated "beginner to intermediate."
Both are easier rides than Stillwell, Shalomoff emphasized. "There are no bumps and no hills. Some places are a concrete road. But I guess it can be a workout, still."
