Cycle of life and health: Road to fitness begins with feet on the pedals and eyes on a new lifestyle
Marion Brandenberger started riding a stationary bike for exercise in 1988, after his doctor told him he had diabetes.
It quickly became more than just exercise when he hit the asphalt with a neighbor over Memorial Day Weekend in 1989.
"As soon as I got back, I went to my wife and said, 'Let's go buy some bicycles,'" recalls Brandenberger.
The exhilaration of watching the landscape roll past, feeling the sun and the wind on his face and sharing it all with his wife, Faye, and cycling friends they made along the way have kept him in the saddle since then.
At nearly 69, Brandenberger is still 150 pounds lighter than he was in 1988, when he stood 5'10" and weighed 390 pounds. His blood pressure is good, his pulse rate is in the low 50s or slower. After years of managing his diabetes without them, he's now taking minimal medication to maintain the proper insulin levels, he says.
But he's still pedaling several days a week, riding up 30 and 40 miles at a stretch, still completing a 100-mile ride every now and then. In fact, last week the Richland, Ind., man was off on a weeklong bike tour through Indiana with a longtime cycling friend, camping with his wife, who only stopped riding in recent years.
At 78, she's has had to take a hiatus from cycling as she recovers from back surgery. She still enjoys the camping and the time spent with their cycling friends, and she figures all the riding she did with her husband over the years, much of it on a tandem, helped her get through and recover from extensive spinal surgeries.
Bicycling is a popular form of exercise, recreation and low-cost transportation, made all the more attractive as gasoline prices continue their steady ascent.
It's also good for your health, providing, putting an enjoyable spin on the thirty minutes of aerobic activity everyone from the Surgeon General to the Centers for Disease Control recommend we get three or more times a week.
Biking is easier on the joints than running, more readily accessible than swimming, and, as the Brandenbergers can attest, it's fun, sociable and accommodating to people of a wide range of sizes, ages and beginning fitness levels.
Research continues to reiterate the importance of regular, sustained physical activity in maintaining a healthy weight and reducing the risks for a range of diseases, including heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes and colon cancer. It helps maintain muscles and bones, strengthen the immune system, and increase energy levels and enhance sleep.
Regular exercise has been associated with increased self-esteem and relief from mild to moderate depression.
Ultimately, it helps us live longer, suggests a growing body of research. A study released through the Centers for Disease Control associated higher levels of exercise with lower mortality rates for both older and younger adults, noting that even those moderately active on a regular basis experience lower mortality rates than the least active.
All of this news comes as Evansville becomes an increasingly better place for biking, from planned expansion of the Pigeon Creek Greenway Passage to Evansville Mayor Jonathan Weinzapfel's recently announced goal of establishing 20 more miles of bikeways by 2010.
Vanderburgh and surrounding counties already offer hundreds of miles of paved county roads with low traffic, some of them on established routes, like the Burdette Park's 32 miles of Discovery Trail bike routes.
And there are new trails, like the bicycle-pedestrian trail connecting Burdette Park to the University of Southern Indiana, or the mountain bike trails recently approved and funded for Harmonie State Park.
The Brandenbergers belong to the Evansville Bicycle Club, which offers an array of rides each week, with options for riders of various levels of experience.
By Roger McBain
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