National Bike Challenge – Team Bike Friendly Richardson July Check In

Posted in BFR Misc by dickdavid on July 12, 2012

For those of you who don’t know, there is a National Bike Challenge hosted by Endomondo, The League of American Bicyclists, Bikes Belong and BikeDFW. From May 1 through August 31 they’re trying to get as many riders as they can to ride 10 million miles. They’re also doing regional challenges, putting small teams of 10 riders in friendly competition with each other for points and miles.

Bike Friendly Richardson has a team and we’re doing quite well in our region. So far, we’ve remained in the top 3.

Here is an Early July Update from BikeDFW:

July 06 at 13:53

Some interesting stats as of July 1st:

Texas has 854 total rides in the National Bike Challenge. 395 of those (46%) are from the DFW area. That means we’re providing as many riders for the NBC as the rest of Texas combined… awesome!

Texas currently ranks 34th among all states. That sounds pitiful until you consider that the state rankings are calculated on a per capita basis. Texas (pop. 25.1 million) ranks first among the really big states, including New York (rank 42nd, pop. 19.4 million) and California (rank 43rd, pop. 37.2 million)… However we’re a long way from the leaders like Wisconsin, which is currently in 3rd place with 5,788 riders (pop. 5.7 million). There’s still plenty of time, so ENCOURAGE YOUR FRIENDS AND FAMILY TO PARTICIPATE.

There’s a lively competition in the DFW team category where several area bike clubs are duking it out with the TI DLP team for top honors. However, the Bike Friendly Richardson and DORBA teams are also in the top 10 but FAR ahead in commuting miles (and gas saved). Over 75% of their mileage is commuting. David Appleby, riding for Plano Bicycle Association, was the mileage leader at the end of June with over 2,000 miles since May.

Of note, Howard T Maher of Richardson was a Gold Level drawing prize winner in the National Bike Challenge drawing on July 1st. He won a Specialized Globe bike.

We took a closer look at the stats. So far, even thought we don’t have as many collected miles as some of the local bike clubs, we do have the most cycling transport miles – recorded for transportation over recreation or sport. As of today, we’re at 4,376 miles (80% of our riding), closely followed by DORBA, who has 3,520 miles. The two teams ahead of us in the local challenge (who have many more miles/points scored) only have 1,223 and 793 miles for transportation.

We’re excited by these results, but we also feel that the community can do better and put more transportation miles on the leaderboard. If you commute, it’s not to late to join the challenge and show how DFW is doing our part.