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

[dbb]

@Tim Kelley 27059 wrote:

Expect a 3000 mile ride or something like that towards the end of August.

Do you think that might present an opportunity to claim use of performance enhancements?

[Tim Kelley]

Maybe I’ll just break it up into two weeks of back to back double centuries then.

[vvill]

@Greenbelt 27047 wrote:

Drat, I was really hoping to win the one-year supply of K-C Cottonelle bath tissue & moist wipes this month.

I would definitely use them given all this humidity we’ve had. I’m constantly washing my helmet/padding/straps and HRM strap and it still gets funky easily.

@Tim Kelley 27059 wrote:

I’m protesting their shoddy interface and file size limitations and the fact that if you do a 216 mile ride that takes all day on June 30th and are too tired to think about updating your Endomondo profile before midnight then you don’t get any points for it.

That and I’ve been particularly busy. I’ve been keeping track of my miles on a separate excel list and will calculate my own totals when I get the opportunity. Expect a 3000 mile ride or something like that towards the end of August.

I totally agree the interface is remarkably shoddy for something so high profile, and that thing with the end of the month deadline is stupid. After August I won’t be using Endomondo until the next NBC or whatever.

I look forward to the 3000 mile ride! Or 10 200mi rides in a row. You do get 20pts/day just for riding, so you might want to spread out your totals (unless you compensate by adding 20miles x days you rode to your gigantic total).

[Arlingtonrider]

YAY!!! I can’t believe I won something in one of the drawings – a Trek water bottle for my Trek bike! I really needed one. I only have about 8 or 9 of them and none of them say Trek. I love my Trek.

[Tim Kelley]

@Arlingtonrider 27114 wrote:

I only have about 8 or 9 of them and none of them say Trek.

Take a look at the bottom of your BikeArlington water bottle. You should faintly see the Trek logo embossed into the plastic!

[Arlingtonrider]

I looked and it does! OK – that one will remain my real favorite – it has both BikeArlington AND Trek.

[Rod Smith]

My power was out June 30th and it did not come back on for a few days. I lost 73 points because of that but if you were “too tired” to post your 216 mile ride, that’s your fault.

I’m not whining about the lost points.

The top placed rider in Virginia and the top placed rider in Maryland are both on the same team and they both are in the WASHINGTON-ARLINGTON-ALEXANDRIA, DC-VA-MD-WV community. Between them a total of 10,468 points. Why do they only have 8931 on the WASHINGTON-ARLINGTON-ALEXANDRIA, DC-VA-MD-WV team leaderboard?

[Tim Kelley]

@Rod Smith 27230 wrote:

My power was out June 30th and it did not come back on for a few days. I lost 73 points because of that but if you were “too tired” to post your 216 mile ride, that’s your fault.

I’m not whining about the lost points.

The top placed rider in Virginia and the top placed rider in Maryland are both on the same team and they both are in the WASHINGTON-ARLINGTON-ALEXANDRIA, DC-VA-MD-WV community. Between them a total of 10,468 points. Why do they only have 8931 on the WASHINGTON-ARLINGTON-ALEXANDRIA, DC-VA-MD-WV team leaderboard?

You probably didn’t mean that to sound as abrasive as it came across.

The point total issue is a known bug that Endomondo is not able to fix. I believe the issue is referenced in a previous post in this thread.

[Rod Smith]

@Tim Kelley 27252 wrote:

You probably didn’t mean that to sound as abrasive as it came across.

The point total issue is a known bug that Endomondo is not able to fix. I believe the issue is referenced in a previous post in this thread.

Harden up, Ironman!

I don’t believe this issue has been mentioned in the thread. All the riders on your team are in the WASHINGTON-ARLINGTON-ALEXANDRIA, DC-VA-MD-WV community. All of your team’s points are accounted for in the community team leaderboard. I think the problems mentioned in the thread were due to misunderstanding about how the points are totaled in the LOCAL leaderboard which includes only people from your state (local means state). If you click on communities > your community > teams you’ll see the total points from members of your team who reside in your community. My team has two members in the WASHINGTON-ARLINGTON-ALEXANDRIA, DC-VA-MD-WV community, so we’re not highly placed, but we should be a few places higher than we are, unless I’m misunderstanding something.

[Rod Smith]

Oh, I was just whining about the point total. I knew no one would know the answer. It doesn’t matter, it’s the difference between 15 and 17th place, haha.

[Author]

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