silentben

May is National Bike Month and the Bay Area Bike to Work day is on May 14th. In that spirit, it seems appropriate that this month's challenge be about commuting.

Since people have commutes of various lengths there will be two parts to this challenge:

1. Highest number of miles ridden while bike commuting
2. Highest number of days out of the month that bike commuting occurred

I've been thinking it over trying to come up with a suitable definition of "commute" for this challenge and here's my first shot. A bike ride shall be considered "commuting" if the purpose of the ride is primarily for transportation as opposed to exercise, recreation, training, or competition.

Examples of commuting:
* Riding from home to work/school and back (should be pretty obvious)
* Grocery store runs or other errands
* General transportation of any kind like riding to a doctor appointment, riding to a significant other's apartment, etc.

Not commuting:
* Organized century
* BF group rides
* Training rides like the Polo fields
* Any kind of organized race be it officially sanctioned or something like the Low Key hillclimbs
* Any time you just go out for fun

Fuzzy areas:
* Riding to the beginning of an organized ride. I can see arguments for this going either way but I'm going to call it NOT commuting for purpose of this challenge
* Extended or "scenic" commutes via indirect routes. These miles ARE allowed even if they end up doubling or tripling the length of the ride.

Going on a weekend pleasure ride and stopping to pick up some small part at the LBS on the way does not turn your ride into an "errand" and does not qualify it as commuting On a similar note, doing sprints on your commute ("training") is fine. It's all about the primary purpose of the ride.

Mileage and days ridden will be on the honor system. You're encouraged to post throughout the month so everyone can see your progress. Winners will be awarded bragging rights for a month.

JoelS

Oh see, and I had a great idea for May. I'll save it for June.

ahpook

w00t and I get a new, shorter commute starting Monday!

10 mi each way is gonna be a breeze after the 19+ I've been doing the past 2 years.

For most mileage, does it count if you *could* go 10 miles between work and home but *choose* to take a 30 mile loop instead?

silentben

Hmm, the extended commute is another fuzzy area. I say it counts since it's really just an extended cast of you could go 0 miles (drive) but choose to ride 10 As for your new shorter commute, which is moving, home or your work?

Joel, looking forward to your challenge next month!

silentben

Yesterday was my first time commuting all month

May 14: 24.6 miles to work, 32 miles home

Cumulative stats for May: 1 day of commuting, 56.6 miles

powpow

Total days commuting: 10
Total miles commuting: 20

I'm a big fail in the mileage department.

Ygduf

You need to start commuting home for lunch to double that 2 miles/day!

I've commuted 2x this month (sad, right? Stupid officemates stealing my bike storage put me off riding in.) Total of 36 miles.

powpow

Actually, I'm sick today and my mind isn't working like it should. It's actually two miles each way, for a total of four miles.

EDIT:

Total days: 10
Total miles: 40

I'm still a big fail in the mileage department.

Ygduf

But now you're ahead of me!

I'm picking up the new car tomorrow. It has significantly worse mileage than my old car, so that will prod me to start riding in. I kept it so slow on the commute in today that I didn't even sweat. Only added like 5 minutes to my ride time, and I've started storing my bike right at my desk without complaints. All my excuses are gone.

dl33

Rule question?

Example is: I ride in to work in the morning, ride to SportsBasement/Sandwhich shop at lunch and back to work and ride home in the evening. Does this count as 1, 2, 3 or 4?

silentben

The runs to sports basement or lunch fall under using the bike primarily for transportation (instead of recreation, training, etc.) so it all counts for this challenge.

silentben

Rode to work again today - 49.4 miles round trip

Total days commuting this month: a whopping 2
Total commuting miles: 106.0

Beaker

Didn't anticipate participating, but I have 2 entries to put a number up

1. Bike (then BART then Bike again) to work day 05.14.09 - 18.6miles
2. Rode back from a car service 05.16.09 - 14.6miles

Total so far - 33.2miles.

I'm not going to win this one.

chrisoco

I am in this contest and here is my update.

So far I've "commuted" per the rules every day except for the 2 Saturdays to date where I did long rides for fun and for the experience. With a long ride planned for Monday and hopefully Saturday the 30th, I expect to "commute" a total of 27 days this month (I have 20 of 22 to date).

Without a car, I don't have much choice since very little is within walking distance. My ride to work is an 11-mile round trip. Add to that shopping, errands, going to the city, heading out to Twin Creeks in Sunnyvale, etc. I have 290 miles to date.

rydaddy

Haven't been doing so well with my commutes. I've only got 4 in so far, including today. A bad poison oak outbreak kept me off the bike the entire first week of May. Then I had a couple doubles centuries which required some recovery days during the week . I did start adding miles to my commutes the past couple days, and intend to finish the month off in the same fashion.

Including today I only have 4 days of commuting, and 191 miles. My normal commute is 32 miles RT, so I've tacked on 63 miles to these commutes. I'm at 780 miles for the month. Trying to reach 1000 by the end...

1jacktripper

I'm not formally committed ( read: hedging) to this challenge, but I think I have the following:

I've commuted 6 times so far on my bike, and each one is about 30-miles round trip, plus 4 miles each time for lunch run's, we are looking at 204 miles to-date.

Oh, I also extended the commute twice to Montebello, so that adds another 40 miles, bringing the total to 244 miles.

Ygduf

I thought I was having a big month with like 500 miles... Impressive!

chrisoco

I finished the month with 1) 401 commuting miles over 2) 27 days. The 4 days I did not "commute" were days I did long rides so I had a big month on the bike. 550 road miles for a total of 951 miles. I should be as ready as I'll ever be for the Terrible Two.

P.S. Zero pushups and pullups.

uspspro

on average I probably get around 100-120 commute miles per month.

I don't really keep track of it.

dl33

16 days of bike to work, 20 miles each day.
2 days of local errands, 1 mile each.

totals
---------------
18 commute days
322 commute miles

silentben

2 days, 106 miles, same as my last update. May was my lowest total mileage of any month this year. My highest was in January and it's decreased every month since.

What makes Chris's numbers all the more impressive is that he also runs like 6 miles a day! Well at least he had run 6 miles earlier in the day last week when we did Kings mountain.

msincredible

I don't have a workplace I can commute to (unless you count unicycling down the hallway). I only got in 3 commuting to the store days, 57 miles total (too many short business trips this month).

chrisoco

Yeah, I run 2 or 3 times a week for about 60 miles a month. But not having a car (not having a choice) is the key to all my commuting. Are there any prizes?

chrisoco

I do have a single speed fixed that I like to use sometimes to show that I'm cool but since it has no odometer, I did not use it all month as I was tracking myself for Ben's challenge. Now I can break it out.

rydaddy

7 days commuting for a total of 322 miles. This includes a couple days when I added miles in the morning (98 miles were added).

I also ran errands on 10 days for a total of 70 miles.

Total for the month was 1041 miles. My first 1000 mile month and half of them came in just 3 days.