National Bike Challenge-Local Contests

[cvcalhoun]

I just got the following note from Alison Dewey of the National Bike Challenge:

We have three really great advocacy organizations that will be hosting Local Challenges within the Greater DC region – WABA, Bike Arlington, and Fairfax Advocates for Better Bicycling. They will all have counties and/or wards which they requested. There is a lot of commuting that happens between all three areas and riders will be placed in the appropriate Challenge based on their home zip code. This was the fairest way we could think of to allow the many advocacy groups to have a Local Challenge.

So apparently there will be local prizes as well as the national ones. Just one more reason to sign up!

And for those that missed my previous posts on the subject, you can set up FitnessSyncer, a free service, to automatically sync all your rides from Garmin, Strava, RunKeeper, etc. to MapMyFitness, which is one of the apps automatically picked up by the National Bike Challenge. So if you’re already logging rides, you won’t need to do anything special, beyond the initial set-up, to get them into the National Bike Challenge. (Currently, the rides occasionally end up on the wrong day, but that is scheduled to be fixed on Wednesday.)

Some other links:

• Washington Area All-Stars team
• WABA Women & Bicycles team
• Washington DC Area league (includes both of the above teams, and will include any other team that lets me know they want to join; just send me a private message)

Topic

[Tim Kelley]

Huh. We’re still waiting on confirmation of that ourselves.

We weren’t exactly sure how things were going to shake out.

[cvcalhoun]

The information comes directly from the National Bike Challenge’s person in charge of Local Challenges, so it should be accurate. But I agree they really should have told you about it!

@Tim Kelley 82423 wrote:

Huh. We’re still waiting on confirmation of that ourselves.

We weren’t exactly sure how things were going to shake out.

[Tim Kelley]

@cvcalhoun 82424 wrote:

The information comes directly from the National Bike Challenge’s person in charge of Local Challenges, so it should be accurate. But I agree they really should have told you about it!

Yeah, Allison is probably writing the email now.

[Tim Kelley]

Just got an email saying that we would know more by Friday!

[eminva]

Hi – I think I’m the one Allison expects to set up the FABB effort and I have to confess I haven’t watched the webcast for administrators yet (had an appointment when it was originally scheduled), plus there have been some technical issues that are yet to be resolved. Was this an email in response to something you sent, or did this go out generally to participants? I ask because I will probably get questions from my FABB friends if this is going out generally. For my own part, I wasn’t going to announce anything until the technical issues were resolved.

Thanks.

Liz

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[cvcalhoun]

I had asked her about local challenges, because the board was showing that there weren’t any in our area, and I knew there were several bike advocacy organizations. Sorry if I spilled the beans prematurely!

@eminva 82438 wrote:

Hi – I think I’m the one Allison expects to set up the FABB effort and I have to confess I haven’t watched the webcast for administrators yet (had an appointment when it was originally scheduled), plus there have been some technical issues that are yet to be resolved. Was this an email in response to something you sent, or did this go out generally to participants? I ask because I will probably get questions from my FABB friends if this is going out generally. For my own part, I wasn’t going to announce anything until the technical issues were resolved.

Thanks.

Liz

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Rod Smith]

I’m glad to hear WABA, FABB and BikeArlington are going to do this. As I recall, there were no local challenges for DC and NoVa last year. Bike MD sponsored a state wide challenge last year, but that sort of duplicated the state leaderboard as far as seeing how one was placed among Maryland riders so it won’t be too big of a loss if they don’t do it again, but I hope they do. If not, I hope Maryland suburbs are included in the area WABA local challenge covers!

[eminva]

@cvcalhoun 82441 wrote:

I had asked her about local challenges, because the board was showing that there weren’t any in our area, and I knew there were several bike advocacy organizations. Sorry if I spilled the beans prematurely!

Makes perfect sense. You did not spill the beans! I’ll set up the FABB end just as soon as they correct the technical issues.

Liz

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[cvcalhoun]

Yeah, I’d really prefer to be in the WABA local challenge than in one for Maryland, because I figure I have more in common with others in the DC area than with people out in Hagerstown, for example. But I’ll be happy if we Marylanders are in any local challenge. And we now at least have our Washington DC Area league, so we can do comparisons across the DC area.

@Rod Smith 82446 wrote:

I’m glad to hear WABA, FABB and BikeArlington are going to do this. As I recall, there were no local challenges for DC and NoVa last year. Bike MD sponsored a state wide challenge last year, but that sort of duplicated the state leaderboard as far as seeing how one was placed among Maryland riders so it won’t be too big of a loss if they don’t do it again, but I hope they do. If not, I hope Maryland suburbs are included in the area WABA local challenge covers!

[eminva]

We now have a local challenge for Fairfax County and Falls Church up and running, sponsored by FABB. I see Bike Arlington on the leaderboard as well as WABA, although the latter seems to be confined to DC residents. Whither Marylanders?

By the way, your participation in the local challenge seems to be automatic based on your zip code. Leaderboard seems to be based on points per 1000 residents.

Liz

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[Rod Smith]

Scraping the WABA sticker off my frame.

[cvcalhoun]

I’ve written to NBC, asking that the Maryland suburbs be added to WABA. Is there anyone on the WABA side who could help with this? I understand that they can’t put all the DC suburbs into WABA, because Virginia has its own organizations, but there really seems to be no reason to exclude the Maryland suburbs–including WABA members like me–from WABA’s local challenge.

[cvcalhoun]

Just got this message from Alison:

If you reside in Montgomery or Prince George’s County you are now part of WABA’s Local Challenge. BikeMD had those two counties last year and I just wanted to be fair in giving them another shot with them this year. Thanks for your patience and persistence.

Rod, you can put your WABA sticker back on!

[Tim Kelley]

@cvcalhoun 83946 wrote:

I’ve written to NBC, asking that the Maryland suburbs be added to WABA. Is there anyone on the WABA side who could help with this? I understand that they can’t put all the DC suburbs into WABA, because Virginia has its own organizations, but there really seems to be no reason to exclude the Maryland suburbs–including WABA members like me–from WABA’s local challenge.

I asked about everything coming under one team for the DC region but they seemed to want to split things up.

[cvcalhoun]

Yeah, it would have been nice to have everyone in one local challenge, but it looks like they had several organizations wanting to sponsor, and decided to divide them up.

I did set up a Washington, DC Area league to try to have something that everyone in the area could be a part of. It includes the Washington Area All-Stars and the WABA Women & Bicycles teams right now, and I’ve made it public to enable any other local teams to join.

@Tim Kelley 84005 wrote:

I asked about everything coming under one team for the DC region but they seemed to want to split things up.

[Author]

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