USU meets the challenge in bicycle competition
It took 91,075 miles for USU to win first place in the college/university division of the National Bike Challenge. The competition ran from May 1 to Sept. 30 and required competitors to log every mile they rode on their bikes.
USU assistant abilities coordinator Alexi Lamm heard about the nationwide competition and thought it would be a good fit for the university.
“It’s a great competition because it’s fun, helps reduce carbon, saves gas money and it’s healthy,” Lamm said.
Throughout the five-month competition, USU students and employees managed to accumulate more points than any other university in the country.
“I think it shows that we care about our health, our environment and this great city,” said Dayna Berrett, wellness coordinator for USU.
Aggie Blue Bikes, the USU Sustainability Council and the Employee Wellness Program collaborated to make the competition possible.
“They helped us recruit people,” Lamm said. “We had more than 200 people sign up.”
Berrett recruited employees to participate in the challenge and encouraged them to form teams to add some competition between university departments.
“I think because we kind of had an internal competition going on within the university, it drove people to get more miles,” Berrett said.
Team AGRS – agricultural science – biked the most miles as a team and the public relations and marketing team had the most miles averaged per person.
Aggie Blue Bikes provided prizes for the winning teams and individuals.
According to Blue Bikes Program Coordinator Stephanie Tomlin, prizes included new mountain bike tires, grocery panniers, blinking bike-lights, free bike tune-ups and bike tool-kits.
“The monthly prizes were to keep people incentivized to keep riding,” Tomlin said. “It was a fun way to keep people motivated.”
According to Lamm, cyclists registered on a website called endomondo.com to track their miles.
“Competitors could track their miles manually, or there is a smartphone app that’ll do it for you,” she said. “You get 20 points for every day you ride at least a mile, plus one point for every mile.”
According to Lamm, the majority of the participants were employees because most USU students were on summer break.
“In the future, hopefully more students will register, but I think we’d just like more people to participate overall,” she said. “We don’t care who it is; the idea is to get more people on bikes.”
Tomlin said the competition revealed there is a strong cycling community that exists at USU.
“I guess it’s one of those things that whether we realize it or not, it’s very present at the university,” she said. “A lot of those miles were commuting miles, so it’s kind of like a silver lining. We have really horrible air quality here, and it’s refreshing to see that people are using carbon-free forms of transportation. It shows we can rally behind something we all care about.”
Berrett said USU plans to continue this competition in the future because she believed it was a success.
“If we were able to get a few more people caring about the environment and about their health, that means it was a successful event,” she said. “Next year, we’ll just add to it.”
– sarah.men@aggiemail.usu.edu