National Bike Challenge 2015-Washington Area All-Stars

[cvcalhoun]

Don’t know what to do now that Freezing Saddles 2015 is over? Motivate yourself to exercise, and potentially win prizes, by participating in the National Bike Challenge May 1-September 30! You can sign up now so you’ll be ready when it starts. (If you signed up last year, you’re already in, and don’t need to sign up again.) Please don’t hesitate to join the team just because you’re not sure how many miles you will bicycle–EVERY mile helps!

To join:

1. Sign up at the National Bike Challenge registration page.

2. If you’re local to the Washington, DC area (two hours by bike from downtown), join the Washington Area All-Stars team! You can do this by going to the Washington Area All-Stars team page and clicking on “JOIN.” You can also join a school team and a workplace team if you like.

3. If you have a smartphone, you can use it to keep track of your miles automatically:
a. Sign up for Strava, MapMyFitness, Moves, or Endomondo.
b. Link the app to your National Bike Challenge account by signing in and going to Edit My Profile. At the bottom left of that page is a place where you can authorize the relevant app.
c. Put the app on your phone, and use it when riding.
d. Sign in to the National Bike Challenge site at least once a week, and on the last day of each month, and click on the “Log Miles” button, then click on “Sync Now” on the page that comes up.

4. If you have a Garmin, you can use it to keep track of your miles automatically:
a. Sign up for Strava. (You can also do this with MapMyFitness, but I’m keeping this simple by avoiding posting two sets of directions.)
b. While logged in to Strava, click on the red arrow in the upper right, then choose “Upload activity.” You will be given options to either upload from your Garmin or, if you already use the Garmin site to upload miles, to sync your Garmin and Strava accounts.
c. Sign in to the National Bike Challenge site at least once a week, and on the last day of each month, and click on the “Log Miles” button, then click on “Sync Now” on the page that comes up.

5. If you have neither a smartphone or a Garmin, you can still enter miles manually. Sign in to the National Bike Challenge site and click on the “Log Miles” button, then fill in the information under “MANUALLY LOGGED MILES” and click the “LOG MILES” button.

Topic

[Rod Smith]

Strava synced for me. I’d suggest wanting at least an hour or two before manually uploading. If you’re set up for Strava syncing and you manually upload, you might end up with double points when the auto sync finally connects.

[cvcalhoun]

Strava is syncing for me when I go to the site and hit the sync button. I suspect the issue is that it doesn’t automatically sync often, or perhaps reliably, if you don’t push it.

[Vicegrip]

In.

[ts986]

How do people have so many miles already? It’s hard to compete! I thought I had a pretty good commute (17 miles roundtrip), but how do people already have over 300?

[ebubar]

@ts986 115038 wrote:

How do people have so many miles already? It’s hard to compete! I thought I had a pretty good commute (17 miles roundtrip), but how do people already have over 300?

I have a 30 mile roundtrip and am still far from the top. I find my ranking improves every Friday, after I log a week’s worth of commutes. It then falls on weekends, when I sleaze ride and others get their 100-200 mile rides in.

The challenge started on a Friday this year, so lots of weekend/nice weather riders got some big points (Plus you’re in the running with amazing folks like Eric Williams and Rod Smith who ride more in a single day than I ride in a week!). In the past I find that steady commuters start climbing the leaderboards while weekend warriors lose time to weather, heat, vacations, family, etc.

Just set a goal for yourself (i’m shooting for Diamond level this year!) and go for it!

[AFHokie]

just signed up

[dbb]

There are some folks on the local leaderboard that remain unaffiliated with a team. Please take a look. If you know any of the unaffiliated folks, please invite them to join the Washington Area All Stars.

[sjclaeys]

I’m in.

[cephas]

Slightly off topic, but is there any way to find my stats from last year’s NBC if I didn’t save them?

[consularrider]

The NBC has the 2014 stats on the leader board (I don’t think there is a separate Challenge period selection though), just select that year and use the “find me” (middle of the page) function. I was #112 nationally (#1 in Arlington) with 12,382 points

[hozn]

Sync didn’t work for me (despite linking w/ Strava earlier). I tried triggering a manual re-sync, maybe it will eventually populate, but it still shows “0” for # of rides this challenge, etc. The new site looks nice, but still obviously is still a little glitchy. I’m definitely not caring enough to enter my rides manually, so if Strava sync doesn’t work, I’ll just unlink/remove my profile.

[Tim Kelley]

@hozn 115081 wrote:

Sync didn’t work for me (despite linking w/ Strava earlier). I tried triggering a manual re-sync, maybe it will eventually populate, but it still shows “0” for # of rides this challenge, etc. The new site looks nice, but still obviously is still a little glitchy. I’m definitely not caring enough to enter my rides manually, so if Strava sync doesn’t work, I’ll just unlink/remove my profile.

It worked for me, but took somewhere in the 15 minute to 2 hour range for it to populate.

[hozn]

@Tim Kelley 115082 wrote:

It worked for me, but took somewhere in the 15 minute to 2 hour range for it to populate.

Yes! — Worked for me too, took an hour or so.

Of course, no 300 cray-cray miles for me (and no sleaze rides or intent to check the leaderboard), but happy to add whatever I end up riding to the team’s score.

[Terpfan]

Can we talk the 29 people in the WABA Women team into joining? We would be ahead of Gainesville then.

Also, I thought it was auto-updating me. Then I realized I had to switch my recording to Strava as primary. So the team should be up like 150 odd something points now.

[DCLiz]

I could post something to our Women & Bicycling group. I didn’t realize that this group wanted more members to make a run at 1st place until cvcalhoun posted here and I happened to see it. There are probably others in the same boat.

[Author]

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