National Bike Challenge warms up

Yesterday when I joined the Get Up & Ride National Bike Challenge, I noted that Wisconsin's vanguard in bicycling advocacy had already racked up the third highest point total.

Today, Team Bicycle Federation of Wisconsin, which launched this encouragement program last year, had slipped to sixth place in the "warm-up before the campaign start," which is May 1 and continues to August 31.

Bike Fed Marketing Director and super-bike commuter David Schlabowske is far and away the leader on the 10-member team with 1,793 points. His boss, Bike Fed Executive Director Kevin Hardman, had 964 points as of Thursday. Schlabowske's head start may be attributed to his use of the Capital Bikeshare bikes in Washington, D.C. during the recent National Bike Summit, which he wrote about here.

Every participant in the challenge gets a point per mile they ride and an additional 20 points for each day they ride. As of today, 1,200 riders and 151 teams had already covered nearly 114,000 miles and burned 3.6 million calories. That's impressive, considering the challenge doesn't actually get underway for another month.

The Bike Fed staff, is clearly trying to lead by example. Having started this campaign in 2011 with corporate sponsor Kimberly-Clark Corp. and mobile fitness tracking site Endomondo, the Bike Fed would be satisfied to see Wisconsin cyclists come out on top of the inaugural nationwide challenge.

Get Up & Ride National Bike Challenge is now also supported by the League of American Bicyclists and Bikes Belong.

The mileage logged by cycling participants count toward national and community levels, allowing for local rivalries to take root, too. A mobile app makes the keeping track easy and instantaneous. As points accumulate, solo readers and teams are automatically entered into prize drawings at the end of each month.

Just as the weather is allowing for early season bicycling, the Get Up & Ride National Bike Challenge is providing that extra push to get pedaling. Don't wait until May 1. Sign up now.