Sam Prewitt’s Story

“I’m Sam Prewitt, I work in multimedia, Urban One, as a director of digital partnerships and also an on-air personality on 93.1 WZAK.  My story with biking is pretty two-fold. I guess the first part of this story is biking is some of the earliest memories that I have with my father who’s no longer here. We would bike around Metro parks. It wasn’t even Metro parks at the time, but we would bike around there.  It kind of got away from me. It didn’t hit his heart that I wasn’t riding with him anymore. And plus, as people say at times, it seems more like a child activity. But I don’t look at it as a method of exercise, just more as a childlike activity at the time since I grew out of it. But as we passed forward, I did come into some health issues. So I suffered from high cholesterol, something else that I got from my father, but I didn’t manage it properly. I didn’t think that it would really hit me until I was older in life. However, little did I know, I suffered a heart attack due to high cholesterol at 29 years old when I was running. So after that incident there, it changed my life. I then started to take exercising more seriously because the doctors told me at the time I was a runner, they told me if I didn’t run, then I wouldn’t be here because my body got used to forcing blood through a blockage that I had in my right coronary artery. It was actually 95% blocked. So in exercising and working out that actually got me through the event. Now, not only was I running, I actually did pick up the bike again before that. So I happened to go to my mom’s house when I lived in Columbus, Ohio. Saw my father’s old Miata 210. This bike was made in the 80s, if not earlier. They don’t even make them like this anymore. I took it to a bike shop, got it fixed up, but I would casually do like five, 10 miles, nothing too serious because I was more of a runner at that time. However, even when we fast forward, throughout my life, I had a lot of injuries. I’ve talked about heart attacks, but I also blew out my patella tendon and had to have three knee surgeries to get it fixed, which really altered running for me. Running wasn’t the same. Running started to hurt. So I needed to stay active. Well, what could I do? Right? Well, how can I do the level of cardio that I was used to and not run? So that’s when I started picking up the bike a little bit more because the bike was a big source of recovery for me after my knee surgeries. It allowed me to get my kneecap moving. It was comfortable when I did actually gain my mobility back in my leg and had to learn how to walk again, run, jump. When I learned how to do all of that again, running just wasn’t the same, but biking was. Biking was still easy, it was easier on my joints. Granted, I still had to work up my muscle to climb some hills, but for the most part, it allowed me to get that cardio in that I wasn’t getting from running anymore. So after that, just riding by myself, I started to get introduced to different biking groups. And then that’s when it just took off. That’s when it took off as far as knowing the importance of biking, the safety in biking, the community in biking, and of course the health aspects. So from that point forward, maybe like four or five years ago at this point now, biking has been the primary source of exercise and I’ve met a lot of people through it. I’ve done a lot of good work through biking. And in awe, it helps me to not only make sure I keep my health and check but it also does give me that memory of my father who’s no longer here.

Throughout my time, I’ve got involved in Bike Cleveland as a board member. Also, different biking groups around town like Major Taylor, I ride with them from time to time. I volunteer for Slow Roll and just other biking groups, other biking individuals who I’ve made friends with. We just get out and hit the road and ride from time to time.”