The three ride tags: Work, Recreation, and Errands are pretty self explanatory- or are they? We all understand the Work tag. If you ride your bike to or from work, you tag it “Work.” Recreation seems pretty easy as well. Take off on a ride with your family or friends and you’re recreating.

At first glance errands is pretty strightforward as well. Pick up groceries, ride to the hair stylist or drop off a package at the post office and your ride qualifies as an errand, but how do you classify riding your bike to the theater for a movie, or riding to the park for a day at the beach? If you ride your bike to visit a friend or do a night of bike powered bar hopping, do you record the ride as an errand or recreation? Being confused about how to classify your ride is probably a good thing. It means that using your bike for routine transportation is so much fun that you don’t know whether it’s recreation or utility.

Greenlightride doesn’t have a formal policy on how to tag your rides, but we did have to address the problem when we set up the CO2 savings stats for Greenlightride miles. We chose rides that are tagged work or errands. Our logic is that a CO2 savings only ocurs when the bike ride replaces an auto trip. A  Saturday morning ride with your buddies is fun and doesn’t dump any CO2 into the atmosphere, but odds are pretty good that it didn’t replace a Saturday morning drive.

With that in mind, if you ride your bike to visit a friend, go to the movies, or do some bar hopping, odds are pretty good that, without the bike, you would have done all of those activities in a car. You rode, the car stayed at home, so the bike ride became an “Errand,” rather than “Recreation.” But that’s just one way to think about it. There’s really no reason to get hung up on the definitions. The important question is: “Did you ride?” not ” How did you tag your ride?”

In January of this year samh launched a challenge to all Greenlightride members. Use your bike for commuting or errand running at least 20 days per moth for the entire year. 25 teams have taken up the challenge and have logged over 42,000 miles. I caught up with Sam to see how the challenge has affected him personally. His response is below.

Greenlightride wants your story. Tell us about yourself: The type of riding you enjoy most, favorite bike, how a challenge affected you, commuting/touring tips, why you ride, how you got into cycling, etc. Send your story to Greenlight

Sam’s response

This challenge has affected me as a rider in a very positive way. It’s like Olympic XC ski legend Bill Koch was quoted as saying in the movie “Cross Country with the Snakes”, when he suggested as advice to an up and coming athlete, ‘keep a training log’. The act of recording and cataloging the activities you strive for will bolster your appreciation of it and ultimately allow it to become second nature.

The Ride Twenty Days Per Month challenge would require an individual to ride 240 of 365 days in a year (12 months x 20 days = 240 days). If the trend I’ve kept up since the beginning of the year continues I’m on track to have ride 268 days this year. Although I had tentatively set a personal goal of riding 300 days I think I’m going got be happy with 268.

sgp, a new dentist on the Central Coast of California, created an interesting Greenlightride challenge: 2500Miles August-December. Here’s his story and his motivation for starting the challenge. The challenge has 12 teams and is open to new teams and riders.

My name is Scott, I’m 26 years old, I just graduated dental school from Loma Linda University School of Dentistry, and I am now practicing dentistry full time in a little town called Atascadero, CA. I started riding consistently a little more than a year ago when my knees were hurting from running, and I was looking for another way to get exercise. I saved as much as I could on a poor student’s budget, sold some stuff on eBay, and purchased a 2010 Specialized Allez Elite with 105 components. When you ask what my favorite bike is, I would have to say the one I own, but I do have my sights set on upgrading to a Cervelo R3sl (when my wife lets me, of course!). Until recently, I also owned a Specialized Langster with a flip-flop hub for commuting to school, and I admit that I shed a tear when I sold it.

My main motivation for starting this challenge was fairly simple: I have a few friends who I have encouraged to take up cycling, and I got them to join Greenlightride, but since I had a 2000 mile head start on them, it was hard for them to feel motivated to keep riding and staying active on this site. I decided to start a competition, effectively leveling the playing field for my friends, starting us all at zero miles. If you look at the stats on my team, LLU, you will notice that I am now in third place, which is amazing! Before this competition, I was always leading in miles per month on my team, and despite the fact that I’m riding more miles, trying to catch up, I’m still in third! My friends are riding their hearts out, and it is paying off. My boss, who is my main riding partner, has lost 10 pounds in about a month, and all of us feel healthier and have more energy. Cycling helps keep my mind clear and prevents fatigue during a long day of treating patients, and gives me something to look forward to at the end of the day when we take a ride at dusk.

I think I’ve already accomplished my main goal: Get more people excited about riding their bikes, be active and fit, and stay healthy!

Thanks so much for helping with this great site! I have been doing my best to promote it and get people to join. I’ve gotten about 10 or 11 people to sign up, and about 8 of them are active. I look forward to the day when there are lots of competitions, such as this one, to choose from.

For over 10 years my wife and I have had one vehicle.  I used to commute to work every day, but lost my job a few years ago.  Then my wife and I swapped roles and I began to be a stay at home dad and she worked full time.  I never heard about greenlightride until I skied the City of Lakes Loppet this past winter.  I rode my bike all winter with my son in a snowsuit and a blanket over him in the Burley.  We are very fortunate to live so close to the greenway and since it was plowed all winter, it made for easy riding.  My daughter didn’t like riding the school bus to school, so in the fall and spring she rode her bike with us almost every day. 

 After reading your message, I think I will try to record my riding from the past year.  I will even try to add my daughter and have my wife do the same.  There were some days that we had the car and she rode her bike to work.  It should be easy because the rides were always to the same places and my wife recorded when she used the car for work.

Greenlightride rider: Shawneboy

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