48 Hours to Go: National Bike Challenge Starts Wednesday!

Now in its second year, the National Bike Challenge continues its mission to inspire and empower millions of Americans to ride their bikes for transportation, recreation and better health. The friendly, online competition — sponsored by the League and Kimberly-Clark Corporation — kicks off Wednesday, May 1!

The goal: To unite 50,000 bicyclists to ride 20 million miles in communities across America.

The Challenge is simple, free and open to everyone in the United States. Sign up as an individual or as a team, log your miles, share your stories and encourage others to join you. Download the free, GPS-enabled Endomondo mobile app to record travel distance and automatically upload your miles. Compete with other riders for prizes and awards from sponsors Sierra Nevada and Scott Natural on the local and national level.

In 2012, the Challenge engaged 30,000 individual riders, 9,000 workplaces and 500 communities to ride 12 million miles. We’re already looking at breaking those records in 2013. Even before the official start, the 2013 Challenge has engaged thousands of participants. During the warm-up period, more 10,000 residents from more than 2,000 communities nationwide registered. Collectively, they logged more than 1 million miles and burned more than 37 million calories.

The Challenge isn’t just inspiring individual riders — it’s also spawning competition among communities and businesses, as well. Recognizing the tremendous resource to boost employee health, more than 3,100 companies and nonprofits have already signed up for the 2013 Challenge, including Kimberly Clark Corp., UPS, Target Corp., Facebook, AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and Microsoft Corp.

Are you ready for the Challenge? Sign up at www.nationalbikechallenge.org and join us at facebook.com/nationalbikechallenge.