May is Bike to Work Month
Posted on by Meg MacKay
May is Bike to Work month! The League of American Bicyclists founded in 1880, started this yearly event and are the grassroots force championing safer roads, more resilient communities, and a nation where bicycling is embraced by all. The League's efforts to bring people together through biking prompts happier and healthier individuals while growing safer communities and protecting the environment.
Health Benefits of Biking to Work
Undoubtedly, biking offers remarkable health benefits. It's particularly effective in strengthening your heart and lungs. As you pedal, your heart rate increases, pumping blood throughout your body. Out of all aerobic activities, cycling stands out as the top choice. Engaging your heart, blood vessels, and lungs simultaneously, delivering a beneficial workout. Biking regularly within your exercise routine, leads to deeper breathing, increased perspiration, and a rise in body temperature, all of which contribute to improved health and fitness levels.
Moreover, exercise like biking is renowned for its stress-reducing effects. By triggering the release of endorphins, the feel-good chemicals in your brain, regular cycling enhances mood, self-esteem, and cognitive function. When you are under a lot of stress, you may feel tightness and muscle cramps in your face, shoulders, back, and neck. Furthermore, worrying about this discomfort then leads to more stress, continuing the cycle. Breaking this cycle can be achieved through exercise. Daily exercise can improve your mental health by enhancing memory and thinking, regulating sleep patterns, and increasing energy, just to name a few.
Helpguide.org states: “Try to finish moderate to vigorous workouts at least three hours before bedtime. If you’re still experiencing sleep difficulties, move your workouts even earlier. Relaxing, low-impact exercises such as yoga or gentle stretching in the evening can help promote sleep.” Choosing to be proactive in this way will drastically help your sleep and allow you to wind down easier at night.
Environmental Benefits of Biking to Work
A daily commute by a single occupancy car is quite detrimental to the environment considering the volume of greenhouse gasses and chemicals emitted. To counteract this and reduce your personal carbon footprint, choosing to bike to work fosters a greener environment.
Reducing your carbon footprint through biking truly makes a significant impact on our environment. If everyone does their part, change will be evident. When biking, you aren't contributing harmful chemicals into the air like cars do. By opting to bike, you also enhance air quality, reducing pollution in your neighborhood. Furthermore, biking alleviates traffic on the roads, mitigating traffic jams, potential accidents, and emissions of toxic chemicals.
As more towns and states acknowledge these issues, many are constructing additional accessible bike routes. Forbes states; "Eighteen new bike routes in five states have recently been designated, adding nearly 3,000 miles to the U.S. Bicycle Route System, a developing network of officially recognized, publicly-accessible travel paths across the country. The latest routes — in California, Indiana, Ohio, Utah, and Washington State — represent the largest addition to the bike network to date, both in number and total mileage."
The incorporation of these secure and easily accessible bike routes will enable many Americans to commute to work safely, thereby reducing their carbon footprint and embracing a healthier, more active lifestyle simultaneously.
Throughout this month, our commitment is to bike to work, aiming to diminish our individual carbon footprint and nurture a more environmentally friendly world, all while embracing a healthier lifestyle. What are you waiting for? Start your Bike to Work journey today!
Important Dates:
Bike to Work Week May 13th-19th
Bike to work Day May 17th
For more information visit bikeleague.org