National Bike Challenge – getting to the end

[Rod Smith]

It was a life changing experience. How was it for you?

[dbb]

I think most of us viewed it as a community event. I was pulling as much for the Bike Arlington B and C teams as much as my own. We all had friends on other teams but I doubt any of us saw this as a competition. The teams were quite organic in that we filled the A team, creating a B and C teams as they filled up. While it pushed me to log more miles, I think that for many of the other riders it was largely “business as usual” with respect to miles. I was a victor in the respect that my fitness improved and.

I would expect that the riders on the Bike Arlington teams were riding (in the competition) for the community and not for themselves. As I said earlier, most of the riders were riding, not competing. The greatest “disappointment” is that nobody won either the toilet paper or the new bike.

[eminva]

I think the motives varied for the participants. It did inspire me to ride more miles. I already have a long commute, but I definitely increased the percentage of days that I commuted on my bike over the four months. As the competition wore on, I also wanted to see women well represented on the Arlington-Alexandria-Washington leaderboard so that served as an inspiration. I agree with dbb that I benefited fitness and health wise from a big summer on the bike. I also wanted our region to make a good showing so others in the country (and our advocacy organizations) can see we have support for cycling in the DC area.

I initially joined the first Bike Arlington team but some folks at my office put together a company team and I switched to that before the competition began. The experience helped make the cyclists at our company a little more cohesive and now we have others we can turn to as we advocate for things that cyclists need or want — such as bike commuter benefits, etc.

We did have a couple of guys on our team who work in the same department develop a friendly rivalry. Their non-cycling colleagues even got involved, rooting for one or the other. It ended with one of the guys putting in massive miles the last week of the challenge. His rival compared it to “the look.”

If it inspires us all to ride more, it’s good, no matter what the motive. Good work, everyone!

Liz

P.S. Bumming about the toilet paper.

[Arlingtonrider]

I was inspired to ride every single day, and now that the challenge is over, I can’t quite shake it.

As a result, today I learned that Vamoose buses take bikes (I didn’t think to bring my new (used) Trek Allant, which would have been perfect here in NYC). I also learned that the Hilton just south of Central Park has a rental bike vendor right in the lobby (used it this afternoon for a fun ride down Broadway and around Central Park, where I enjoyed seeing a Scottish bagpiper, a hula class, horse drawn carriages, a white ballerina/mime, the bubble lady, and Strawberry Fields). I also learned that that Bike and Roll NYC has a bike tour of NYC at night. Bye for now – I’ve got to go check that out. I’m not really trying to ride every day, I swear.

[PotomacCyclist]

I cannot tell a lie. I was only in it for the chance to win the toilet paper and Cottonelle wipes. Well, maybe the bikes too.

It was a fun diversion (except for the part about having to log miles online every day). I ignored the contest for most of the first month, so I only ended up riding on about half of those days. After I read up on what the contest was about, I decided to get my butt in gear. From late May to Aug. 31, I rode every day except on one or two days. Sometimes I only spent a lazy 20 minutes on a CaBi bike, but I still did some riding that day.

But I guess I wasn’t in it only for the prizes. Even after I passed the platinum level, I kept riding and logging trips. I could have just bailed out on the last few weeks because it did nothing to improve my chances of winning anything. My focus was divided among cycling, running and swimming (and strength training too). So nearly half of my active hours over the summer didn’t count for the contest. I knew I wasn’t going to get into the top 10 overall but I still managed to get a respectable ranking. My team also stayed up there on the local leaderboard, though not in the national one.

The National Bike Challenge and also the Clif Bar 2 Mile Challenge showed that there are a lot of enthusiastic cyclists in the Arlington/D.C./Northern Virginia/Maryland area.

If anyone is really looking for some recognition, now would be a good time to pile on the miles. No one is logging anything on Endomondo after the Challenge. So someone could probably “win” the local leaderboard just by riding a few miles a day, every day. Personally, I’m not going to bother with that. I’ll wait until next May, and see if there’s another National Bike Challenge.

[Rod Smith]

@dbb 30097 wrote:

…I would expect that the riders on the Bike Arlington teams were riding (in the competition) for the community and not for themselves…

I was riding against the community, for myself.

[Dirt]

@Rod Smith 30078 wrote:

I found this website when I Googled your team name. So we have the National Bike Challenge to thank for my presence here.

Awesome that the National Bike Challenge brought you here!!! Your riding was awesome through the whole thing. I’m glad it got you out putting more miles in. You really kicked butt consistently through the challenge!

I enjoyed the challenge as a whole. It was fun to see so many people logging so many miles. The back and forth really made it fun. I’m kind of happy to have one less place that I have to enter my trips though. With two other things like this ending, I’m down to only having to enter things in 3 places.

Dang it feels good to be back feeling good on a bicycle. I hate being sick!

Thanks y’all. You really did a great job for the DC area!

Pete

[MV Clyde]

I had a great time with the challenge. It was fun keeping tabs on local riders and teams. Like Rod Smith, I found the bike forum when I was looking for a team. I ended up joining FridayCoffeeClub Team 2 (but I gotta admit that I’ve never joined them for coffee….hope that’s ok!! ) It was motivating to watch everyone rack up points. I can’t say that I rode more miles because of the challenge, but I did ride more often. The rules encouraged me to go out for short, relaxing rides on off days to get the daily points.

It was cool watching the Arlington teams compete nationally. This area has some really dedicated cyclists. I’m glad I was part of it. Count me in next year!

[Tim Kelley]

@dbb 30011 wrote:

Looks like our very own Tim Kelley scored a water bottle!

Nice! That’s the first I’d heard of it. I guess they’ll contact me about getting it to me?

[rcannon100]

Final scores and ranks for local teams, based on their National scores (because of the screwy way NBC set up the challenge, if a team has members in MD and VA, those members will not be scored together on the LOCAL Leaderboard. The only way to see the score for a team for all of its members is to look at the National Leaderboard).

Ranking includes teams I know about; I am sure I missed some teams. This is the score for the ENTIRE PERIOD. “Change” is the change in team rank comparing the Final rank to the July rank. A negative change means the team went down in the rankings – a positive change means the team went up.

The full chart should be visible at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AggxFz7Q4c0VdFlka3FBOFZpWjYzazdUeXpFWFhCcXc&output=html

Team / Natl Score * Rank Final * Final Points * Change
Bike Arlington B * 12 * 37818 * -3
BikeArlington * 14 * 37310 * 3
Oxon Hill Bicycle and Trail Club – Team 1 * 24 * 33203 * 2
Bike Arlington C * 33 * 31845 * 3
Oxon Hill Bicycle and Trail Club – Team 2 * 50 * 29227 * 1
Team Finra * 61 * 27956 * 27
Silver Cycles Night Riders * 69 * 26576 * 28
Friday Coffee Club * 87 * 25078 * -32
IDA-3 * 103 * 22733 * 49
Oxon Hill Bicycle and Trail Club – Team 3 * 108 * 22632 * 72
FABB * 179 * 18536 * -5
Friday Coffee Club 2 * 199 * 17804 * 34
Federal Cyclists Commission * 210 * 17356 * 12
Bike Club Yo! * 252 * 15792 * -90
NIH * 288 * 14467 * -22
IDA-1 * 318 * 13760 * 42
IDA-2 * 346 * 13053 * 18
Farm and Rural Bicycle Branch * 398 * 12084 * -15
The Bike Rack DC * 437 * 11315 * -196
Oxon Hill Bicycle Club 4 * 488 * 10416 * 187
VOA DC * 535 * 9658 * -61
IDA-4 * 558 * 9351 * -56
US DOT * 611 * 8722 * -154
Black Women Bike DC Team D * 687 * 7795 * -687
HUD * 695 * 7679 * -695
Arlington Transportation Partners * 848 * 6132 * -87
856 * 6085 * -856
WABA * 930 * 5439 * 66
USCG * 960 * 5179 * -960
HUD 2 * 999 * 4824 * 109
Comcast * 1041 * 4460 * 20
AT&T National Bike Challenge * 1117 * 4064 * -89
NOVA-CBG * 1232 * 3324 * -1232

[vvill]

A combination of this challenge, the 2mile CLIF Bar challenge and a couple of Strava challenges motivated me enough to do quite a lot of extra miles from May through August. The fitness/riding ability gains also added to that (I finally understand why people ride Hains Pt now, and a few months ago would never have dreamed of setting my alarm <6am to go ride it in the morning before work).

Very impressive numbers posted by many around these parts, especially since some of the top riders had a couple weeks off. I did a quick calc and if we did assemble the top 10 BikeArlington riders into a team, it would’ve finished 3rd overall nationwide. I didn’t actually do as many miles as say, Greenbelt, because I got the minimum 20 pts for every day from thru August – but I had quite a few 0.6mi days (which happens to be the distance for a lap around my block). My lowest mileage day was Tour de Fat DC. I rode around inside the pen of weird/crazy bikes for 15 mins after a beer, and logged it as 0.1miles…

I’m especially impressed by those who have consistently longer commutes (Dirt, eminva, Greenbelt, etc.) because they can’t do a shorter commute on the days they feel off. I can shorten mine to less than 9 miles if I’m not feeling it.

I’m most pleased to be not logging on endomondo anymore.

[pfunkallstar]

I’m just glad my normal commuter mileage was able to be converted into something fun. It didn’t so much motivate me as reinvigorate me. My main motivator is a highly internalized fear of Metro.

[Author]

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