Biketober is an annual challenge to ride your bike as much as possible during the month of October. I think the general vibe is to try biking instead of driving. The points incentivize daily rides over mileage, but the participants with the most points are the serious cyclists. Each day you ride is 10 points, and each mile is 1 point. Each point is an entry in various prize raffles.

This was my fifth year participating.

I ended up riding 29 out of 31 days, 73 miles, and 7 hours and 41 minutes for 564 points (200 of those points came from others saying that I encouraged them to ride). I was the 1225th participant in miles, 254th in number of trips, and the 16th in miles among “new riders” (which is just a category meaning I hadn’t biked very much leading up to this year’s challenge).

My workplace (Emory University) was 2nd to Georgia Tech (again) in the 2000+ staff category. My team was 22nd in total points.

I usually like to bike to places, to meet friends at breweries for example, but I didn’t have many chances for that this year. I got a ride in with a friend to meet another friend for beers, a casual ride with another friend, a ride to the barber, and a ride to the library. The rest of my rides were little 10 minute neighborhood jaunts, often at night, just to get my 10 points.

And also to coffee! This year I discovered Coffeeneuring which overlapped some with Biketober. It’s a six week challenge to bike to coffee (with additional rules). But I got in 4 of my coffeeneurs during Biketober.

This was also the first year I’ve won a prize, so that was also exciting!

I enjoy this challenge every year and look forward to doing it again next year.