Increasing Power on Bike To Work Day
Break the cycle: Power your commute
May is National Bike Month and May 20 is “Bike to Work Day” meaning no matter who you are, or where you are, you should dust off your bicycle and increase pedal power with thousands to your work place!
Biking to work is a clean, fun, and healthy way to get to and from work. How does bicycle commuting contribute to a clean environment? Bicycling uses no fuel and bicycles take a lot less energy to make than a car.
For City Electric Supply Chesapeake South, Bike Month is more than one day. Branch Manager Birdes Dozier has previously participated in the Cap2Cap bike trail that spans from Williamsburg to Richmond, Virginia.
“Sidelined with bad knee pains and unable to continue running, I quickly developed a passion for riding, as an alternative form of exercise,” Dozier said.
Dozier encourages his employees, and customers to ride their bicycles more often. “I am constantly encouraging my staff and customers to ride as well,” Dozier said.
Loyal customer Henry Beamon of Beamon Electric also rode the Cap2Cap bike trail with Dozier, and CES Chesapeake South Store Manager Eric Cole, also likes to join their cycling initiative.
“Like running, riding allows me to have the benefit of being outdoors commuting with nature.”
Dozier has ridden more than 2,200 miles through regular weekly rides and participates in other organized riding events such as Martin’s Tour of Richmond Grand Fondo, and the Richmond Moonlight Ride.
Bike cycling gives off energy!
Did you know? A typical bike generator can produce 100 watts. If you pedal for an hour a day, 30 days a month, you produce (30 x 100=) 3000 watt-hours, or 3 kWh.
With a pedal-power generator you can make electricity while you exercise.
According to Mepawatt, the best human efforts at producing power over the course of an hour on a bicycle are around 300-400 Watts.
To put this in perspective, when a person’s AC is running full blast in their home, it can consume about 4,000 Watts or 4 kW. You would need over 10 of the best cyclists in the world attached to bicycle generators to power a house when it is consuming this much power!
Many professional cyclists train using special power meters and cycling watt meters that measure their power output.
So what are the benefits of commuting by bike to work?
1. One 20-mile road trip bike ride per week saves 1,020 lbs of CO2 emissions per year.
2. A 4-mile bicycle trip keeps about 15 lbs of pollutants out of the air.
3. Bikes are up to 50% faster than cars during rush hour.
4. Biking before work raises an employees productivity on average by 15%.
5. Bicycle commuters lose 13 pounds in their first year of cycling alone.
From head to toes, bike cycling’s health benefits are hard to beat. So for today, and the rest of May saddle up and pedal for power!