Congratulations to all of our Bike Month Challenge Leagues!

Community Leagues are such amazing community-building hubs in our neighbourhoods and such fantastic centres for an initiative like this. Leagues have been integral in bringing local recreation options to neighborhoods for over 100 years. From the Pedal Pusher bike clubs, to bike parades through the neighborhoods — and now to advocating for active forms of transportation across our city — Leagues and the EFCL have a long connection to riding!

The Community League Bike Month Challenge encourages neighbours to get active, get outside, and come together as a community in a fun and just a slightly competitive way. A big thank you to United Sport and Cycle for providing great prizes to our top three four Leagues this year. Thank You also to Sugared and Spiced Baked Goods for creating their Bike Month Challenge promotion for 2 free cookies!

Next year we are hoping to add a kms per rider or per capita category to better recognize our small but mighty Leagues. The EFCL also hopes to launch a Winter Cycling Challenge this coming winter! So stay on the lookout for details about that.

And now for the final results!

The 2024 Community League Bike Month Challenge was fantastic! We had a total of 31 Leagues collectively ride close to 148,000 kms — essentially Leagues cycled around the world almost 4 times! It was also great to see new Leagues joining the Challenge and Edmontonians cycling in all parts of our city.

The winners of the 2024 Challenge and United Sport and Cycle Gift Cards are:

1st Place – Ritchie with 20,257 km
2nd Place – Yellowbird East with 14,472 km
3rd Place – Strathcona with 12,894 km
And Hazeldean came in a close 4th place with 12,536 km

Thanks to all who rode for their Leagues and to the dedicated Data Collectors who diligently reported their numbers each week!

~ Erin Olefeldt, EFCL Climate Resilience Advisor

Photos from the Celebration at United Cycle

Get on the bike lane to glory!

The premise of the Community League Bike Month Challenge is simple: whichever League’s members ride the farthest wins. In 2023, more than 24 Leagues saw their members pedal their rides more than 135,000 kilometres. Leagues across the city have adopted the challenge as a fun way to compete with other Leagues and promote active transportation and recreation in their neighbourhoods.

This year, we’ve made the competition even sweeter: thanks to our friends at United Sport & Cycle, we’re excited to be able to offer gift cards to the winning Leagues! The winning League will take home $500 worth of gift cards to United, while second and third place will snag $300 and $200, respectively. Just in case you needed any more incentive to sign up.

Your League can join at any time. See below for our toolkit on setting up a Strava club, which is the quickest and easiest way to track distances. We’ve also created social media posts and mileage update posts for your League to adapt to reduce the amount of work this takes.