2017
National Bike Challenge-blog post by Peter Grasse 1/2/17
Looking for a great way to get your company, club, and/or
community riding? Try the 2017 National
Bike Challenge. The National Bike Challenge dates back to 2008 when Rob Gusky
and co-workers at Kimberly Clark started biking to work when gas was
$4/gallon. They tallied their rides on a
whiteboard. Pretty soon they were using a
spreadsheet, and eventually a website.
In 2011, this program went public with the Wisconsin Bike Challenge, and
in 2012, became the National Bike Challenge with collaboration from two
national biking organizations: the
League of American Bicyclists, and PeopleforBikes. The concept was simple: from May 1st to September 30th ride your
bike, earning 20 points for each day you ride, and 1 point for every mile you
ride. The competition was organized in
non-orthogonal matrices (scientists and engineers started the Challenge)
enabling multiple competitions within the Challenge. Companies competed against other
companies. Within a company, worksites
competed against other worksites. State
advocacy groups competed against each other, and communities vied for top
spots.
Various large companies like Trek, Kimberly Clark, HDR, 3M,
and others recruited hundreds of riders at multiple worksites. At 3M, for example, over 3000 riders were
registered in 2016 at over 150 locations worldwide. Grassroots organizers within companies
recruited riders for the Challenge. The
unique point structure leveled the playing field for the participants. Those making daily short rides could be
competitive with those making weekend long rides. Every kind of ride counted, except trainer
time. Rides with kids, errands,
commutes, races, trail riding--they all count. Companies found it was a great
employee engagement tool, and many riders reported that Challenge participation
was a key factor in their weight loss.
Unfortunately, success caught up with the Challenge in 2016. It's website, having grown through the years,
was not robust enough for the volume of participants, and required
extraordinary resources to keep it running.
Many riders gave up in frustration.
Support seemed unresponsive, but only because resources were prioritized
to patch the leaky boat, rather than respond directly to all the issues.
Volunteers from Thrivent, Kimberly Clark, Wells Fargo, and
3M are working to rebuild the Challenge website from the ground up into a
robust, enterprise level platform. The
League of American Bicyclists will be the administrator of the Challenge. Official sponsor announcements will be
forthcoming. Development resources are
limited, and some prioritization was required.
Strava has been selected as the platform for registration and
logging. The National Bike Challenge
website will pull data from Strava and organize into leaderboards with the
familiar 20 point/day, 1 point per mile scoring system. A non-premium (free) Strava account is needed
to participate. Rides can be logged
manually from Strava phone app or Strava website, or recorded by Strava phone
app or gps device. There are methods to
connect other accounts such as Endomondo, Training Peaks, RideWithGPS, etc. to
Strava.
Strava Clubs will create the non-orthogonal matrices that
will form the basis of the competitions.
More details about how to set these up will be in future posts. An open Strava Club, "2017 NBC
Testers" is available for riders to get familiar with Strava logging. Anyone can join at :
https://www.strava.com/clubs/2017_NBC_Testers.
This group will be used to test the new platform as it is developed.
The new National Bike Challenge website is currently
unavailable.
http://nationalbikechallenge.org, will give you a link to our Facebook
page, where we will try to keep our status current. You can contribute to the Challenge at https://www.generosity.com/community-fundraising/build-a-better-national-bike-challenge. You can also follow the Challenge on Twitter
at @NatlBikeChallen.
Peter Grasse retired in May 2016 from 3M Company(St. Paul
MN) as an R&D manager after 32 years.
For the last 5 years, he was a year round bicycle commuter. Contact him at petergrasse@gmail.com to help
make the 2017 Challenge the best ever.
