Lincoln’s bicycle community, along with support from the Mayor’s Office; Cleaner Greener Lincoln, WasteCap Nebraska, the Lincoln Lancaster County Health Department, BicycLincoln, and WorkWell invite you and your co-workers to participate in a new challenge for 2012.
“The Get Up & Ride Bicycle Challenge” is an exciting new program that encourages people to bike for transportation and recreation. It is open and free to anyone who lives in the Unites States or works for an organization with U.S. employees. It begins May1 and continues through August 31, 2012.
The Challenge is a partnership between the League of American Bicyclists, Bikes Belong, Kimberly-Clark Corporation, and Endomondo – a mobile based sports and fitness tracking community.
The Challenge is organized on two levels: National and Community. Communities are based on the Metropolitan and Micropolitan statistical areas defined by the Office of Management and Budget for use by Federal statistical agencies in collecting, tabulating, and publishing Federal statistics. Participants can join The Challenge as an individual or as a member of a 10-person team. Corporations, agencies, and organizations can have multiple teams.
Participants have two options to track their mileage. If you have a smartphone or other GPS device, the free Endomondo app is easy to use and automatically updates your rides. Additionally all rides can be entered using a manual entry feature on the website for “The Challenge.”
At the end of “The Challenge” plaques will be awarded to the first place team in several categories on the national level. Locally, prizes will be available as well to Lincoln riders.
A complete prize list can be found on “The Challenge” website.
A local “Challenge” Prize Party will be held in September. And it will be a party! Think food, drinks, and prizes!!
Information specific to “The Challenge” can be found at the website: www.endomondo.com/campaign/national
For information on the local level, please contact: [email protected] or [email protected]
Interesting that when I signed up, it assigned me to the Activate Omaha bike to work challenge on Endomondo, based on my zip code of 68510 (which it correctly identified as Lincoln).
Will Lincoln eventually get its own page, or will we always be part of Activate Omaha’s challenge?
There will be a Lincoln page. Right now Omaha is the closest community that is registered with the “challenge”.
Damon, does our team have to formed solely with employees, or can we use family and friends?
With Endomondo you can have a team of any members of your choosing. Work places are classified separately. For example, a club could have their own team, or a work place, or a group of friends and family!
Helmets are a must (legally) for kids under 16 and just plain common sense for eyrveone else. If you don’t want to wear a helmet and are over 16, that is your choice, but DO NOT expect the government to provide you with medical care if you have an accident and become a vegetable by being too irresponsible to wear a helmet! Last summer my 14 yr old was clipped by some yahoo who didn’t understand that bicycles have the same right to the road as they do. She was in a turn lane, properly signalled, started to turn off Springhill on to Hickory. The yahoo on Hickory ignored the stop sign he had and hit her back tire, sending her headfirst into a curb. Without a helmet she would have had brain damage. Bicyclists need to obey the rules of the road and cars need to be more aware of the bicyclists, but most of all bicyclists need to wear a helmet! It just makes sense!
Community seems to have taken the first steps into the light of day, with recent eenvts such as the Omaha Bike Summit and the opening of the Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge, and now some new voices making themselves