Barking Points: Benefits of a Bike Rack

The clearing skies, maturing flowers and greening grass are commonly associated with the welcoming of spring. All of the above are excellent excuses to become re-acquainted with the outdoors throughout some fresh, crisp air and physical activity.

For many Lind-Ritzville Middle School students, the opportunity to enjoy some outdoor activity comes daily when Lind residents ride their bicycles to school. With an increased number of morning cyclists arises an issue: there is no bike rack on LRMS campus for students to safely store their bikes. Consequently, some students are taking interest in the matter, in hopes of promoting safety and encouraging healthy habits.

Students around LRMS, specifically avid bicyclist and seventh grade student, Lane Cooper, are interested in obtaining a bike rack for current and future generations of Bulldogs to enjoy. Cooper elaborated on his opinion when he explained, we need bike racks so that kids like me, that ride their bikes to school every day, have somewhere safe to store them so that they are not stolen. This is a valid point; each year, somewhere between 800,000 and two million bicycles – worth some $50 million – are stolen. Without proper storage equipment, it’s a potential problem for the school. Cooper also mentions, “… schools should have bike racks so bikes don’t fall over and get damaged.”

Encouraging students to bike to school by investing in a convenient place for them to store their bicycles would have numerous health benefits for the students. According to a study conducted by Virgil Wooten, MD, “Morning exercise can relieve stress and improve mood. These effects can indirectly improve sleep, no doubt. To get a more direct sleep-promoting benefit from morning exercise, however, you can couple it with exposure to outdoor light.”

A Danish study from two years ago states that walking or bicycling to school increases concentration during school hours for students within the ages of five and 19. Based on controlled test scores, students that exercised to school scored considerably higher than other students that drove or used public transportation to school.

Additionally, an increase in physical activity has been linked to overall academic improvement. In a 2010 study conducted by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, “Across all 50 studies (reported in 43 articles), there were a total of 251 associations between physical activity and academic performance, representing measures of academic achievement, academic behavior, and cognitive skills and attitudes.”

A bike rack for Lind-Ritzville Middle School campus is well sought after by the students, and would be beneficial for student safety and health.