The National Bike Challenge just ended yesterday. What is it? Folks who use MapMyRide to measure their rides sync their phones with the NBC website after each ride and they rank you nationally and statewide. Weirdly enough, they put Dallas in with Oklahoma. They give you twenty points for riding each day, and then a point for each mile logged, so a ride of one mile gets you 21 points. But who wants to go out and just do one mile? It turns into a pretty good incentive to go out and put in some miles everyday.
Along they way they give you incentives to get up to certain milestones--500 miles is bronze level, 1000 miles is silver, etc. And then everyone who has reached certain milestones is eligible for prizes from the sponsors. I won a year's supply of toilet paper from Scott paper back in May. How appropriate some of you are saying, since reever is full of *%@#.
I ended up winning the challenge for the state of Texas*. One guy from the Dallas area beat me. For me, it was a great experience. I lost twenty pounds--saw the scale read 200.0 for the first time in 20.0 years. If there is a downside to the challenge it is that it makes you meter out your efforts daily, saving your energy for the long haul. Your quality goes down the tubes--or at least mine did. I mean why go out and push at 20mph when you could go farther at 15mph? And why do hills when you can go farther, easier on a flat?
But, all in all it is great. And did I mention that 5 of the top 20 riders in Texas were women????
This is a competition that recumbents can kill at!!! I'd like to see bunches of recumbents in the challenge next year. You get to put a picture of yourself up on the site. Wouldn't it be so cool if the top ten were all pictures of us on our recumbents??? Square Corners, as much as you ride, you could split your mileage three ways and still come out on top. I won with 5715 miles in 149 days. I know there are many of you who surpassed that!
Imagine this screen filled with pictures of recumbent riders.....and if you are leading the pack you get the big picture!!! That's me in Bora Bora.

yah, I'm just glad to be in the thing the year Kurt Searvogel chose to make his assault on the world record for miles in one year--75,000 miles. He is well on his way!!!Last time I checked, his average per day was 216 miles!
 
Way to go, Phantom!