Start recording your miles now if you haven’t already! This year’s National Bike Challenge is up and running.

The National Bike Challenge, which kicked off on May 1, is meant to encourage bicycling through a nationwide friendly competition. Using the website or a few different smartphone apps (MapMyRun, Endomondo or Moves), participants log their bike trips and are awarded points which allow for ranking, either individually or as a team, workplace, school, community or state (see the current leaderboards). Frequency is awarded over distance, so the more often you hop on your bike the better!

Want to make your miles count twice this summer? Combine the National Bike Challenge with the CyclePhilly app!

If you have a smartphone, you can track your bike trips while helping inform the next generation of Philly bike infrastructure. A brilliant bunch of volunteer code jockeys have released the CyclePhilly app, free for Android or iPhone. Cycle Philly, a collaboration between Code for Philly, DVRPC, SEPTA, the City of Philadelphia and ourselves, is a GPS tracker that calculates routes and sticks them on a community map, creating a picture of just how and where Philadelphians are biking.

The app is very lightweight and easy to use. Unlike some apps like Endomondo, it doesn’t inundate you with features. The CyclePhilly app doesn’t sync with the National Bike Challenge, but it’s very easy to grab your miles from the app and record them via the National Bike Challenge website.

The Cycle Philly commute map this morning

The National Bike Challenge runs through September 30, so there’s still plenty of time to grab the Cycle Philly app and start racking  up those miles!

[su_button url=”https://nationalbikechallenge.org/register” target=”blank” style=”flat” background=”#e05a31″ center=”yes” radius=”round”]Let’s do this![/su_button]