news & events
greenprint in the news
Ride a bike back to health
Editorial
The Denver Post
June 22, 2007
June is Colorado Bike Month. If you've been thinking of a way to get fit, why not leave the car at home and kickstart an exercise program that combines commuting with fresh air and fun.
Fed up with traffic jams? Feeling tired and stressed? Maybe it's time to put your foot down - literally.
June is Bike Month in Colorado, a celebration of sanity and fitness that culminates in Bike to Work Day on Wednesday. It's a great opportunity to put your mettle to the pedal and begin the journey back to a healthier, happier you.
As one doctor noted, the mental and physical benefits of exercise are so powerful and wide-ranging that if they weren't God-given, they'd have to be regulated by the Food and Drug Administration.
The simple fact is that the human body, honed through thousands of years of evolution, is not designed for the way most Americans live today. Driving to work, sitting at a computer all day and then driving home to sit in front of a television is an invitation to obesity, high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes and a host of other ailments.
The picture of convenience as a killer isn't just bad, it's getting worse. One recent study attributed weight gain in average Americans to an accumulation of such simple matters as the now near-universal availability of automatic transmissions. Pushing the left foot down on a clutch and shifting gears with the right hand doesn't seem strenuous - but it still burns up a few calories, and it's something the average driver used to do thousands of times a year.
One way to offset such inactivity is through scheduled exercise like workouts at health clubs or the exercise rooms provided by enlightened employers. But with today's busy schedules, it's all too easy to skip such sessions.
That's what's so great about exercise with a purpose, like biking to work - or walking, for those who live close enough to their jobs to make that practical. The simple act of switching from driving to biking on our work commute provides two healthy workouts daily, enough to tip most of us back to a healthy lifestyle.
If you live too far from your workplace to tackle the whole route just yet, there are other options available. Bicycle down to a convenient RTD park-n-Ride and take the light rail or the express bus the rest of the way to your job.
While good health is ultimately a personal responsibility, government also has a role to play, by such simple but vital acts as creating safe bicycle lanes. In the metro area, Boulder has done an outstanding job of encouraging bike travel, and most suburbs have embraced the concept in their planning and open space.
The city of Denver, in contrast, lags behind most of its neighbors.
For one thing, Denver still dares to paint a few stripes on high-speed one-way streets and call them "bike lanes." Such lanes, which often have broken asphalt that can cause riders to be thrown into the path of speeding traffic, aren't bike lanes - they're invitations to suicide.
If "Greenprint Denver" is going to be more than just a slogan, the city has to do much more to make this healthy and non-polluting way of commuting viable for its citizens.
Article URL: http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_6206581
