Austin Mayor Will Wynn has made it a priority to make Austin “The Fittest City in America”, and one way he is working toward that goal is by creating an organized health and fitness program, the City of Austin Physical Education Department. So far, 2,300 city employees have participated in the program and together are running, walking, bicycling and swimming their way to health.
On Friday, January 23, 2009, the City held the second annual P.E. Department Heath Fair. That morning Bike Texas staff Brenda Chuleewah and Mark Stine loaded up their bicycles and trailer with an info board and bicycle safety handouts and pedaled over to Austin City Hall.
They set up a booth there to promote BikeTexas, and to share safety information with the city employees that attended the fair. Subjects ranged from how to do a controlled start and stop to how to teach a child to ride without training wheels, and they also talked tourism trails with interested city staff. Fairgoers were also able to pick up copies of From A-Z by Bike to take home and share with their children.
In addition to the Bike Texas booth, the event included a wide variety of health-related booths and demonstrations as well as keynote speaker Steve Sisson, UT Women’s Track Coach and founder and owner of Rogue Training Systems.
