Florida Sports Magazine: Champ Turned Bike Lobbyist

Libby Harrow is a world champion, a dedicated multi-sport racer who trains with her dog, Nike, and a woman who represents the largely anonymous servants of the public interest who make the recreational pursuits we take for granted possible. Whether you know it or not, you owe a debt of gratitude to Harrow and those like her — selfless activists who patrol the halls of government and plead our case to the people in the power suits.

It’s safe to say we all like bike lanes. It’s also safe to say that we probably don’t think too much about them unless they’re too narrow, too covered with grit and glass, or just plain missing. In any of the above cases we tend to bitch about the powers that be, but we rarely go any further and actually take action to see that the powers that be do the right thing.

Same thing goes for mountain bike trails. We’re all in favor of them, we’re happy to ride them and some of us will even occasionally take up a chain saw or a rake to help maintain them. But basically we just think that some enterprising mountain bike club works like busy beavers to carve them out of empty forest for our eternal and unfettered enjoyment.

How ‘bout recreational riders that understand you’re supposed to ride with traffic, not against it, and remain alert enough to get out of the way of a passing peloton? Again, we heartily endorse the concept, but few of us ever do more than utter the occasional profanity at the mouth-breathing, brain-dead moron who doesn’t get the basics of highway safety.

Well, here’s a little clue. Without the Libby Harrows of the world, things would be a lot worse. Harrow, a resident of Vero Beach, Florida, is one of those rare souls who invests her time in the total picture of cycling and off-road sports infrastructure and makes things a little better for all of us.

And believe it, without Harrow and many like her, we wouldn’t have bike lanes, MTB trails and bike safety courses. While we tend to think of lobbyists as slimy, corrupt creatures who sway governments in the direction of their clients’ interests, Harrow has worked inside and outside the system as a lobbyist of sorts, actually educating city and county commissioners as to the needs of recreational athletes. It’s more important than you think.
Living the Life

Obviously, the life of Libby Harrow is a complete integration of vocation and avocation, keyed, strangely enough, by the pre-Title IX absence of girls’ sports in her high school.

“We didn’t have women’s sports, but I’m very competitive,” she recalls. “I was never much of a runner; but when triathlon came along I said, ‘swimming and cycling, that I can do.’”

Jumping into the tri scene in 1986 at one of Florida’s first triathlons, Cypress Gardens, she gave the fledging sport a good try — for 15 years — before getting a little tired of it.

“I entered XTERRA at Oleta (in Miami) in 2001 and it was fun — it rocked!” she says. “I liked off-road because it takes skill and finesse and anything can happen out there with the course, the weather and your equipment.”

After the XTERRA introduction in Miami, she embarked on a road trip with friends that included lots of mountain biking in legendary destinations like Hood River, Oregon; Moab, Utah; and Durango, Colorado. This led to a quick stopover in Keystone, Colorado, where she upset a local ‘girl’ from Boulder to win her age group in a regional XTERRA event and punch her ticket for the World Championships in Maui. And just like that, with a win in Hawaii she went from XTERRA neophyte to XTERRA Age Group World Champion in her first off-road season.

Even as she made the rounds of the triathlon circuit, Harrow immersed herself deeply in the activist side of sports. While working at a bike shop in Vero Beach, she first entered the fray, so to speak, in 1992 by taking a seat on the Bicycle Pedestrian Advisory Committee of Vero Beach.

What sparked the decision to become a cycling activist?

“People think that bike lanes and bike trails are just going to happen,” she states flatly. “They won’t unless riders themselves let government know that’s how they want their tax dollars spent.”
Working On the Inside

After more than a decade of volunteer work as an advocate for cyclists, she crossed the line from outsider to true insider when the position opened for Bicycle Pedestrian Coordinator in St. Lucie County.

“The IMBA (International Mountain Biking Association) rep in Fort Pierce sent out an e-mail about the job and I got interested because I care about bicycle safety, trail advocacy and bicycle lanes,” she says. It didn’t hurt that the St. Lucie County head of Long Term Planning was a customer of hers at Alan’s Bicycle Center, so she soon found herself doing the long commute to the next county south and putting in 10-hour days.

“Probably the best thing about it was the bicycle safety courses I took out to the schools,” she says now. “The County actually bought 60 bicycles and two trailers, and I worked with the teachers to teach proper riding habits. The teachers loved it and the kids loved it — and I loved it because I was getting kids out from behind their computers and onto bikes. It was something they could take home with them and put into practice right away.”

The Longest Crusade

After an eight-month stint with St. Lucie County, Harrow had the opportunity to return to her roots as the manager of the new Orchid Island Bikes and Kayaks — in the very same location where she had put in 10 years at Alan’s Bicycle Center.

“I hated to leave St. Lucie County, particularly when they didn’t have anyone set to take my place, but it was better money and I didn’t have the terrible commute, so that freed up time to train,” she says. Of course, even that move was tied to two-wheeled activism.

“I went into the shop to tell Malcolm Allen, the owner of Orchid Island Bikes, about a workshop for the Indian River County Greenway and in doing so got the word that he was looking for help in the shop,” Harrow says. “When he was the only bike shop owner in the county to show up at the workshop, I knew that he gets it, that he understands for the bicycling industry to be successful, we have to have infrastructure.”

That infrastructure doesn’t come easy.

“I’ve been working on getting a mountain bike trail for the Indian River County for five years,” she confirms with a resigned sigh, “and I don’t know if I’m any closer now than when I started. Twice we’ve had tracts voted on and approved by the County Commission, only to have them taken away again.”

While the complete story of the quest for this trail would fill volumes, the basics are that it was Harrow’s idea to attach the mountain bike trail project to the Greenway plan for the County, thus creating a solid bit of safe cycling infrastructure.

Greenways, for those unfamiliar with the concept, are designed to create shared use routes away from roads that can be used for walking, running, cycling and, in some cases, horseback riding. Following a European model, greenways create a safe haven away from the omnipresent internal combustion engine where citizens can get good healthy recreation in a natural setting. They can be paved, dirt, grass or gravel — the critical issue is distance from roadways, though often they wind up being as shared use paths next to roadways.

While virtually everyone endorses the general concept of greenways, actually securing a specific route can be a harrowing exercise in bureaucracy. The big bugaboo is securing — and paying for — right-of-ways.

“That’s the biggest expense by far,” Harrow confirms. “Even if you just want to include bike lanes on a new road, there’s not much additional cost to actually pave them, but the costs of acquiring the additional land from the landowners can be very high.”

Things get even more complicated when you talk about greenways and mountain bike trails. The project to clear the Indian River Greenway has come up against such diverse agencies and interests as the Indian River Farms Water Control District (IRFWCD), the Florida East Coast Railway (FEC) and the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA).

How is this alphabet soup of agencies involved? In the case of the first two, if you want to get from point ‘a’ to point ‘b’ without using roads, you look for controlling interests of long-run right-of-ways, meaning canals and railroads. The IRFWCD has so far resisted giving up right-of-way on the reasoning that they require access to maintain and dredge their canals, though how a greenway would restrict that access and why they need to control both sides of a canal isn’t really clear.

As for the FEC, they remain unconvinced of the safety of a shared use path in the same right of way with an active railway (as opposed to the very successful rails-to-trails model, which relies on inactive railways).

And the FAA controls the land where Libby Harrow would like to set up her mountain bike trail. The FAA is not opposed, but it is required by Federal statute to receive fair value for any land leased to outside interests. In the case of the mountain bike trail that adds up to a neat $78,000 per year, well outside the reach of Indian River Mountain Bike Association but a number a County government could swallow without burping.

‘Woman From Mars’ Sells It to the Suits

This brings us to the final stage in the ongoing saga — convincing government to move.

“Government can do amazing things. You’ve just got to convince them that what you want is in the taxpayers’ interest,” Harrow says.

And that means selling it to the Suits, the elected representatives and non-elected bureaucrats who control the purse strings. It’s not an easy sell.

“Most of the people (I speak with in government) think I’m from Mars. They have no comprehension of mountain biking whatsoever. They think it’s just something for kids. I gave them a list of doctors, lawyers, land developers — pillars of the community — who regularly ride, but often they just don’t get it,” Harrow sighs.

Given the epidemic of childhood obesity in America, one would think “something for kids” would be reason enough to move on greenways and trails; but that misses the reality of government, where every official is besieged with requests from competing interests.

“Once, a county commissioner voted against our proposal and told me he just didn’t understand it. It had been explained to him and he had read the proposal, but he just couldn’t fathom why grown adults would want to ride bicycles in the woods. Another time, I had the Public Works director of a city tell me his community wouldn’t be putting in any bike lanes because roads are for cars and we don’t need bikes…and this was just two weeks after a pedestrian was struck and killed by a car while pushing a baby jogger,” Harrow says, and it’s clear the stories could go on and on.

There is hope, however. The news about the $78,000 tab for the mountain bike trail is recent — “breaking news” Harrow calls it — and there is a reasonable chance the Indian River County Commission will fund the project if, of course, the local cycling community stands up and lets them know they want it. As for the larger matter of the greenway, well, anybody who knows what Libby Harrow goes through to finish XTERRAs in places like Keystone, Colorado — at over 11 thousand feet of elevation — Pelham, Alabama, with temperatures near 100 degrees, or Maui, with its unrideable sun-baked climbs, knows little things like right-of-way issues and recalcitrant bureaucracies won’t be able to hold her back forever.

Meanwhile…

As the quest continues to build her trail, Libby works, trains and represents XTERRA as an official Ambassador, spreading the good word about the sport, selling their gear in the bike shop and wearing XTERRA-branded uniforms for training and competition. She also wouldn’t mind a little companionship outside her faithful training partner, Nike. Turns out bureaucrats aren’t the only ones who don’t ‘get’ her lifestyle.

“As a 56-year-old single woman, trying to find someone who understands my world is very challenging,” says Harrow.

But then, how many world champions are truly understood?

For more about Libby Harrow, including her race history and future plans, go to www.xterraplanet.com and follow the links to Community>Ambassadors.

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