Chris Conley: Hello, San Juan Regional Medical Center employees. It's great to be here on the San Juan Regional Podcast. My name is Chris Conley. I'm the President of Farmington Area Single Track. Today, I just want to give you all a little brief history of what our organization is, how we came to be, and why we feel it's so important to be a cyclist in the area and the health benefits that it has that come along with it.

So FAST started in 2019. It was founded by five local cyclists. We mountain bike together every Tuesday night and we're sitting around thinking, Hey, we need a unified voice for the cycling community in Farmington because there wasn't anything. So we all joined together. Started a nonprofit organization, 5.1.c.3, called Farmington Area Single Track, also known as FAST. In doing so, we started some community group rides that we tailored towards youth because we felt that the community needed more activities for youth. So we invited the youth out to ride with us and get them involved and it started growing.

We got more and more interest. We tailored the rides to the skill levels of the kids that showed up. We saw kids that could barely ride a bike to kids that were very proficient. There's one individual in particular that came to us and said, I can ride 40 miles by myself. And about one mile in, he's laying on the ground saying, this is where I'm going to die.

I'm not going any further. And he stuck with us, come to find out he was smoking marijuana and kind of headed down the wrong path. After about two years of riding with us, that particular young man, I couldn't keep up with him anymore. He had gotten so fast, so good on the bike that it was very impressive, the transformation.

He stopped smoking weed and kind of turned his life around. So that really inspired me to push harder with the youth in this community, seeing that impact that we had on this one particular individual. So, to this day now, fast forward, he is an assistant coach of ours at 18 years old, trying to give back to our program because he felt inclined to do so because of the transformation that we made in his life.

So it's awesome to see that come full circle. All of you as healthcare providers in the area know the battles that we face. Alcoholism, obesity, diabetes, depression, anxiety, suicide, the list goes on and on. We believe in our program that we are combating each and every one of these things with these individuals.

So not only are we targeting youth, but we're also offering adult classes as well now. So after the youth group rides grew to a point where we thought, man, this is something big; we went ahead and actually initiated a youth program, which started in the spring of 2022. And every year has doubled in numbers.

We started with 38 kids the first year, to spring of 2024, that we're now at 156 kids. So it's a testament to the community and what they're wanting for their kids. And they see the potential and all the good things that have come from this program. We're teaching youth not only to be cyclists, but, they're building confidence. They're learning a healthy lifestyle. I consider cycling more of a lifestyle than it is a sport because it's something that you can do from the age of two or when you can first get on a Strider bike till you no longer ride a bike. There's really no age limit on it. So back to all of these things that our community is facing, alcoholism, obesity, diabetes, depression, anxiety, and suicide.

Being outdoors and active on a bicycle is one of the best ways to combat all of these things. We all know the obvious physical gains from cycling, cardiovascular, muscular, all of those things, but there's a mental component that comes with it that a lot of people don't really think about. And for me, that is probably the biggest reason that I am an avid cyclist is for the mental part of it.

It's my therapy. So, I've talked to parents and adults in general who say, that riding a bike helped me with my anxiety or my depression. After a bad day at work, you can go get on the bike, ride for an hour and a lot of those things are erased. So the beauty of cycling is it's a low impact activity.

A lot of people like to run, but it's jarring on the knees, the low back. A lot of runners kind of find, end of their career, if you will, in running and will transition to cycling, because of that low impact.

It's good for strength, stamina. It's a fun way to get fit. It's an adventure. It's a sense of freedom being outside, seeing new terrain and new places, and you can make it what you want. It can be super easy, such as the Berg Park River Trails, or you can get into more technical terrain, rocky routes.

So it's an activity that can be enjoyed by everyone, every skill level. Now with the advent of e-bikes, that allows other users that struggle a little bit on climbs or, or being able to get up certain obstacles. They can have the assist of an e-bike. So people that maybe would have just said, okay, my cycling career is done.

I just can't quite do that. Well, now they have this other tool to help get them back outside on the bike and staying active. So it's just a real great way to combat a lot of these things that we face. There's been many studies done by specialized bicycles, particularly on ADHD and how kids learn in school.

They've proven that kids that ride a bike 30 minutes before school every day focus more, learn more, they become more effective students. So there's tremendous gains from being a cyclist and developing that lifestyle. Diabetes, there's studies that were done showing that Type 2 diabetes is drastically reduced in adults if you're a continued cyclist.

Obesity, people who exercise outdoors tend to exercise for longer periods of time. So you get a larger gain from a cardio aspect. You're burning more calories because it's a consistent elongated workout. Gym workouts have their place and they do certain things, but there's studies that prove that gym workouts are oftentimes less effective than workouts that are done outside because of the stimulation in the mind, just from being outdoors, initiates a longer workout period. So, these are a lot of the things that we find that help solidify why you should adopt cycling as a lifestyle and not necessarily just a sport, if you will.

So, we want to thank you for listening and I hope you all have a great day.Thanks.