This June, Brantley Tyndall completed the Trans Am Bike Race, a 4,191-mile ride across America.
“I’m not training like I was, so it’s a little bit of a shock to my system to go out for a ride and see where I’m at,” the athlete says about his post-race days.
Although he’s not road biking much anyway. After 800 hours of training, he’s taking a little break. Tyndall is more than an athlete. As director of outreach for Bike Walk RVA, he says he hopes to talk about more than racing.
“I don’t want to be remembered just for riding my bike,” he says, noting that the race was a way to draw attention to his safe streets advocacy.
A recent success is the initial planning for the 41-mile Ashland to Petersburg Trail, a 10-year project.
“It’s like the Capital Trail, but that’s always going to be a recreation outlet,” he says.
He describes the proposed trail as a “metropolitan backbone for biking and walking,” integrating transit, workplaces and residential neighborhoods. It’ll be wider and focused on commuters. “We want to make the region a place where people can bike and walk to work.”
His other upcoming project, Richmond Families for Safe Streets, launches later this month. He was inspired by similar campaigns elsewhere and by a personal tragedy: The drunk driver who rear ended his mother, permanently impacting her health.
“Everyone knows someone hurt in a car crash. We’re going to be training people directly impacted by that violence and empowering them as advocates.”
