reminder about Wisconsin Bike Challenge and family ride tomorrow.

[Sonia Dubielzig]

Hey everyone, two reminders:

1) Tomorrow's family ride starts at the Lake Country Trailhead at 6:00 p.m.  The last two rides have been pretty short (5-8 miles) and very easy, since we've had young kids on their own bikes.  We'll just try and adapt to the needs of whatever families show up on the ride, but most likely try and aim to get as far as a playground so the little ones can play for a bit, then we'll turn around and go home.  These rides have been a nice way to meet other families who have little ones but like to bike. 

2)  The Wisconsin Bike Challenge starts tomorrow.  You don't have to start logging your miles exactly tomorrow (you can start whenever you want) but points will start accumulating as of tomorrow.  We've got 7 people on the Waukesha Bicycle Alliance Team for the Wisconsin Bike Challenge--there are only 3 more spots left! To sign up, go to http://www.endomondo.com/campaign/national, and sign in via facebook or create an account at endomondo.

Any time you get on your bike (for mountain biking, recreational riding, or transportation) counts towards the challenge.  I can see this being a great way to motivate yourself and your colleagues or friends to ride more. There are lot of great statistics that the site tracks for you, including the number of calories burned, the amount you've saved on gas, and the pounds of CO2 that don't go into the air as a result of riding.

One more thing:  Once you're signed up, I recommend staying within the endomondo.com/campaign/national part of the site. The challenge part of the site is very easy to navigate and to log your miles, but the rest of the endomondo site can be somewhat confusing. To see who is on your team and see how much riding they have done, click on the link underneath your name and photo that says "Riding for [Team Name] at [location]. Click on your team name and you will see everyone's points for the week.

Or, you can click on the LEADERBOARD menu at the top of the challenge site. Then you can see where you rank in the Wisconsin Challenge. You can also click on TEAMS to see where the teams rank in the challenge.  You can also toggle between the National/Local portion of the challenge, to see how Wisconsin stacks up against the other states in the national challenge, or to see how you rank compared to all the other

If you need help getting started on endomondo with the challenge, I recommend watching the following sets of videos:

1)  Welcome to the National Challenge video

2) Overview of National Challenge website video

3)  Joining Endomondo video

4)  Logging Miles video

5) Leaderboard video

6) Changing your profile video