Billed as a “warm-up to the Hotter’N Hell Hundred,” which attracts 14,000 or so people from all over the country to Wichita Falls each August, the first Cycle Cowtown is planned for June 22, 2013, Robert Earley, CEO of the JPS system, confirmed at the end of May.
With early support from Fort Worth’s bike-loving mayor, the county judge, the Chamber of Commerce, the downtown business district, Sundance Square, county commissioners and Earley, who loves riding his bicycle almost as much as he loves promoting community health, Cycle Cowtown should prove a popular venture.
“Who to better put on a great cycling venture than the JPS Health Network?” Earley asked. “Our medical team is so committed to health, and cycling is such a healthy sport. A lot of our residents and other physicians and staff are serious bike riders and already big supporters of the Hotter’N Hell.”
The JPS team provides volunteers each year to stock, staff and support first aid services at several rest stops and at the HHH’s big finish-line medical tent. The 31st annual HHH will be on Aug. 25. It is always scheduled for nine days before Labor Day, the hottest time of the year.
“Our medical team has partnered with the HHH for several years, and they pull off an incredibly great race, year after year,” Earley said. “Now they have welcomed the opportunity to help us do the same.”
Founders of the HHH were in Fort Worth for a planning session recently, and when Earley asked whether they thought the big endurance race would attract at least 500 riders the first year, he said, the team from Wichita Falls told him: You should be ready for 8,000 to 10,000.
“Dr. Jim Barbee, who heads up the sports medicine program for JPS, is the instigator for a lot of this. He says we really need to make this happen. It will be a good thing for everyone involved,” Earley said in a recent phone interview.
Cycle Cowtown will benefit the JPS residency programs, which now train 202 physicians each year in family medicine, emergency medicine, psychiatry, orthopedics and obstetrics/gynecology. JPS also partners with Baylor Health System for a general surgery residency and with the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School for residency programs in ophthalmology, otolaryngology and oral and maxillofacial surgery.
“All proceeds will go directly back to our residency programs, and that’s a big benefit for this community,” Earley said. “Surveys show a 75 to 95 percent retention rate – physicians stay and practice medicine in the communities where they trained. Texas loses a lot of the good physicians who complete their residency programs outside the state.”
Also, he pointed out, physicians tend to have very supportive families who are very active in the communities where they work, so bigger and better residency programs are a win-win deal for the whole community.
In addition, Earley said, big bike rides, especially 100-mile rides, bring in a lot of people from out of town and out of state, even out of the country, who are likely to stay two or three days.
He recalls looking for a place to stay in Wichita Falls two months before the ?2010 HHH.
“A very sweet lady at one of the hotels told me they were totally booked, and she believed everyone else in town was also full. Ironically, she suggested that I try looking in Fort Worth because it was the closest place where I might find a room available,” ?Earley said.
“Riders will be staying in our hotels, shopping in our stores, eating in our restaurants and visiting our great museums and other attractions, like Billy Bob’s,” he noted. “A fantastic bike ride is a way for JPS to give back.”
Cycle Cowtown is planned as a 100-mile primer to get acclimated for the even hotter HHH. However, like the HHH, it will also feature shorter rides such as a 10K, 25-mile, 50-mile and 100K. Routes have not yet been established.
“We plan to start downtown and hope to include some of our scenic and historic neighborhoods as well as rural areas out by some of our lakes … Even if you are just watching, there’s something special about seeing 5,000 bikes fly by,” Earley said.
Source: fwbusinesspress.com by Carolyn Poirot
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