The National Bike Challenge is on!

[KLizotte]

Start your Pedals, America – The Get Up & Ride

National Bike Challenge Is On!

New online competition will engage and connect bicyclists from coast to coast.

Washington, D.C. – March 21, 2012 – Launched today by a powerful alliance of the Kimberly-Clark Corporation, the League of American Bicyclists, Bikes Belong and Endomondo, the National Bike Challenge aims to inspire and empower millions of Americans to ride their bikes for transportation, recreation and better health.

The Challenge is simple: Sign up as an individual or as a team, log your miles, share your stories and encourage others to join you. Riders will compete for prizes and awards on the local and national level, including a Grand Prize trip through California wine country from Trek Travel. Already, organizations in 26 states have committed to participate and have started warming up for the May 1 start date on the Challenge website: nationalbikechallenge.org.

“The League is excited about this unique opportunity to share the many benefits of bicycling and offer a fun, engaging entry point for new riders,” said Andy Clarke, President of the League of American Bicyclists. “There’s nothing like riding a bike with your friends and colleagues and the National Bike Challenge will create a new social network of cyclists stretching from coast to coast.”

The online initiative was piloted by Kimberly-Clark (K-C), Endomondo and the Bicycle Federation of Wisconsin in 2011. The idea was sparked by K-C research engineer, Rob Gusky, and Kimberly-Clark extended the competition to its 57,000 global employees. The Challenge proved to be a great team building and wellness activity for K-C’s sustainability efforts globally. Participating K-C employees logged 357,739 miles globally, with U.S. employees pedaling 182,210 miles. The success in Wisconsin led to a bigger vision: Taking the challenge to the national level.

“We’re pleased to be the national sponsor of the Challenge as it supports the wellness of our employees and the communities we serve, while contributing to improved air quality by replacing car travel with clean, healthy bicycle trips,” said Jan Spencer, K-C’s senior vice president of continuous improvement/procurement/ sustainability. “This year, K-C is providing an extra incentive for our global team members: The Kimberly-Clark Foundation will donate 10 cents to the League of American Bicyclists for every mile logged by a K-C employee during the 2012 Challenge.”

The platform for the National Bike Challenge was created by Endomondo, a social fitness network with 7.5 million users worldwide. “Riding a bike for transportation is among the top five activities for our European users, and we look forward to helping expand this kind of biking in the U.S. with this campaign,” said Mette Lykke, Co-Founder of Endomondo. “Logging your miles is easy and the social interaction with co-workers, family and friends really makes it fun and motivating to get up and ride.”

“Bikes Belong is delighted to be a part of the National Bike Challenge, which provides all the tools to help more people ride bikes more often,” said Bruno Maier, vice president of Bikes Belong. “We’re looking forward to seeing all the different types of riders who participate. The Challenge is a great way to encourage people to live healthier lives.”

The Challenge runs from May 1 to August 31, 2012, but the public is invited to sign up now and get warmed up. For more information, visit http://www.nationalbikechallenge.org. Join us at facebook.com/nationalbikechallenge.

Topic

[Greenbelt]

@Arlingtonrider 20666 wrote:

Are you divers? Great diving there, and maybe gentle finning in warm water might help (or maybe not – ask an expert). Hope you feel better soon – enjoy your trip!

This week, I’m a one-legged diver. You tend to swim in circles, though.

[PotomacCyclist]

Somehow I overlooked this thread. I ended up registering with a different local team. I’ve been riding a fair amount but I didn’t post any of my miles until a couple days ago, after I got a reminder email from Endomondo. I didn’t realize there were prize drawings. But since I’ve already ridden the miles, why not post them and become eligible for the prize drawings? I know the odds aren’t that great but I participated in the Greenlight Ride contest a couple years ago (their Tour de France promotion) and won a non-GPS bike computer. I think they were capitalizing on the excitement over Lance’s return to the TdF that year.

I roped in a couple other (non-local) people to that Greenlight Ride contest and both of them won prizes too. One guy won an aero bike helmet and the other woman won a cyclocross bike! (I would have posted about the contest here, but the Bike Arlington Forum wasn’t around back then. I think.) Sadly, Greenlight Ride didn’t have any more big contests with prizes, though they still run many non-prize contests. It’s not that I’m only looking for prize contests, but it can be a hassle to post all of my rides if there isn’t even a slight chance of a prize.

But fortunately, there are prizes in the National Bike Challenge! LOL. I don’t really care if I win any of them or not. I just like the idea that I’m eligible for one of the prizes. It does feel different to be riding when there’s a 1 in 5,000 chance of winning a bike that month. I get an extra zip in my stride, er, pedal stroke.

[PotomacCyclist]

If I had remembered this contest at the start of the month, I would have done more riding on the tri bike. Instead, I put a lot of hours on the heavy and slow mountain bike. I was even slower during the many hill workouts on the heavy and slow MTB. So I would ride for an hour and barely register any miles at all, though I was working pretty hard.

But now I’m switching back to the tri bike (most of the time) for the summer, so I’ll rack up more miles. Too bad that running miles don’t count too. I’ve been piling on a decent amount of those. Even sadder that I can’t convert those run miles into estimated bike miles. My 3-hr. long run counts for… zero in this contest. But at least I should be at the 500-pt. mark for this month, and the 1500-pt. mark by the end of the contest. That would still make me eligible for some of those bikes!

[Arlingtonrider]

PotomacCyclist – All that discussion and you didn’t even tell us which team you’re on! I’m a little biased in favor of Killer Bees, but also rooting for all the local teams, especially those that forum friends are on. Go ________?!

[rcannon100]

That would still make me eligible for some of those bikes!

Correction. Life time supply of toilet paper. The bikes are mine! 😡

Have learned that Shirlington is just the perfect distance for a casual weekend ride to go get frozen yogart!!

[rcannon100]

Here are the #NBC scores for local teams, based on their national scores.

Explanation: The NBC makes an arbitrary division of communities. In the local screen, team members from NOVA are counted separate from team members from MOCO. If you are in MoCo, and you look at the local scores, you will only see scores reflecting other team members from Moco. The only way to see team scores for local teams, where team members might be in DC, or NOVA, or MD, is to look at the National scores for the local teams. Not sure I see every local team – and this is a scan of all national scores.

We have a number of new teams this week, including the Friday Coffee Club!

Bike Arl B is in 9th place nationally! Bike Arl A is in 17th place nationally.

Team / Natl Score 6/28/2012
Bike Arlington B 9628
BikeArlington 8247
Bike Arlington C 7974
Friday Coffee Club 6625
Bike Club Yo! 5563
Team Finra 4755
FABB 4722
The Bike Rack DC 4516
Federal Cyclists Commission 4405
IDA-3 4394
NIH 4118
Silver Cycles Night Riders 3593
Friday Coffee Club 2 3520
IDA-1 3165
US DOT 3133
Farm and Rural Bicycle Branch 2996
IDA-2 2874
VOA DC 2514
HUD 2459
Crystal City 2131
IDA-4 2099
Oxon Hill Bicycle and Trail Club – Team 3 1900
Hobsons 1646
Arlington Car Free Diet 1587
WABA 1317

[KLizotte]

I hope some of the local papers pick up on this thread. It would be nice to show how many miles the cyclists of the Wash DC area are putting in. It would also be nice to be able to compare how the DC area is doing against other regions, e.g., Seattle, San Fran, Minneapolis, etc. As you say, the geo boundaries the website picks makes this somewhat difficult, though probably more so for us because of the two states, one city peculiarity.

Yesterday I was rather surprised by how many recreational cyclists (cruisers, beater bikes, rentals) were out in the extreme heat. If the weather had been cooler, I’m sure we would have been swarmed by cyclists I also saw policeman on bikes for the first time in Pentagon City.

[GuyContinental]

Don’t forget about the Cascades challenge (nudge nudge Klizotte- post yer miles)! The Arlington Loopies are 6th out of 1600 teams (and Ccrew is 8th out of 12K participants)

[Justin Antos]

Go Friday Coffee Club 2!!

[KLizotte]

@GuyContinental 20686 wrote:

Don’t forget about the Cascades challenge (nudge nudge Klizotte- post yer miles)! The Arlington Loopies are 6th out of 1600 teams (and Ccrew is 8th out of 12K participants)

Opps, miles logged. Unfortunately they have locked the previous weeks so I can’t enter those miles – grrrrr. Sorry!!

[Mikey]

@KLizzotte

honestly I would spread out the miles that you couldn’t log over this week. Who cares if you end up with 100 mile days this week, we will know the truth.

-Mikey

[GuyContinental]

@essigmw 20698 wrote:

@KLizzotte

honestly I would spread out the miles that you couldn’t log over this week. Who cares if you end up with 100 mile days this week, we will know the truth.

-Mikey

Yup- we are ineligible for prizes anyway. Might as well.

[consularrider]

@essigmw 20698 wrote:

@KLizzotte

honestly I would spread out the miles that you couldn’t log over this week. Who cares if you end up with 100 mile days this week, we will know the truth.

-Mikey

For this challenge, I don’t think the miles matter as much as the number of trips and the percentage of commuting days?

[Dirt]

I hate to ruin the B-Team’s lovely 9999 score, but I’m gonna.

[KLizotte]

@essigmw 20698 wrote:

@KLizzotte

honestly I would spread out the miles that you couldn’t log over this week. Who cares if you end up with 100 mile days this week, we will know the truth.

-Mikey

In that case, I’ll use the unrecorded May trips for when I’m on vacation at the end of June and not riding. Being a spreadsheet person, I have everything recorded anyway.

I thought I could get away with entering everything by the end of the month like the Endomondo challenge. Oh well.

It appears this competition is only concerned with commuting miles. I finally read thru the FAQ today. This is an excerpt:

I sometimes bike the long way home, ride to mid-day meetings, and do errands by bike on the way home. Can I include these miles/trips in the contest?
While we applaud you for riding more (and more and more), this contenst focuses on commute trips. Those extended miles will certainly add to the fun, but please subtract those miles when updating your trip log.

NEW! I work at two worksites, with different distances from home. Hiow do I handle that?
Set up your base commute with the distance for one of the worksites. When you commute to the other, you can update the mileage in your trip log.

NEW! How many days per week may I log trips?
As many as you work. In previous years, riders could enter 5 days maximum. This year, you may enter up to 7 days. That said, we discourage gratuitous overtime for nefarious purposes.

[Author]

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