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Are you a hoarder? No, not like those poor souls on TV who fill their houses with junk, or cats, or clothes. Are you a mileage hoarder? Do you swim bike or run a week or a month's worth of miles and then wait until the last day to enter them all? And do you just dump all your miles into a single entry?

If this describes your mileage entry habits, then the 99% of athletes who enter their miles as they swim/bike/run them would like you to please stop doing that. 

it only takes a couple of minutes to login and enter your miles, especially when you can enter one of each type of workout simultaneously. This makes for a more accurate picture of team and individual standings as we go through each session. It also makes for a much prettier mileage graph on your individual athlete stats page. 

So unless you want the NCC TV crew to show up unannounced at your next workout, please enter your miles as you go. You'll feel so much better if you do.

The results have been verified, the numbers have been crunched. Here now are the official results for the February Bike Session of the 2011-2012 edition of the National Challenge Competition.

Benchmark Winners

The bike session was just like the swim session in that teams went all out to reach the mileage benchmark first. For the bike session that is 7500 miles. Just for the record, on June 11 2011 an asteroid passed within 7500 miles of the earth and it barely made the news.

First to reach the 7500 mile mark: Cyclonaut Multisport Club of Agawam MA on January 10th. Congratulations to them for putting the hammer down early and keeping it there. Have a look at their team stats page to see just how they piled up the bikes miles, day by day.

Here are all teams to reach the 7500 mile mark, in order: 

1. Jan 10: Cyclonaut Multisport, Agawam MA
2. Jan 11: DC Tri Club Team 1, Washington DC
3. Jan 14: Kansas River Valley Tri Club, Wichita KS
4. Jan 17: Alaska Tri Club White Wabid Wabbits, Anchorage AK
5. Jan 18: Hammerhead Tri Club Team 1, Jacksonville FL
6. Jan 19: Louisville Landsharks, Louisville KY
7. Jan 25: Boulder Tri Club, Boulder CO
8. Jan 27: Pittsburgh Tri Club, Pittsburgh PA
9. Jan 28: Northwest YMCA Tri Club, Irmo SC
10. Jan 31: Harftord Area Extended Triathletes, Hartford CT

Overall Bike Winner

Cyclonaut Multisport, Agawam MA with 23,748.37 miles

Divisional Winners

Division 1

Cyclonaut Multisport, Agawam MA - 23,748.37 miles

Division 2

Kansas River Valley Tri Club, Wichita KS - 16,211.62 miles

Division 3

Fredericksburg Tri Club, Fredericksburg VA - 4,924.47 miles

Division 4

Northwest YMCA Tri Club, Irmo SC - 8,546.95 miles

Division 5

Women of Steel, Auburn IN - 4,437.14 miles

Individual Winners

On the men's side, David Bowne of Jet City Tri annihilated the competition for a second consecutive year, riding to a convincing win with 3,919.19 miles. Now that you've picked your jaw up off the floor we can confirm that those miles are indeed for real and have been verified. Congratualations David!

On the women's side, Mary Guertin of Cyclonaut Multisport rode away with the title with a total of 1,709.2 miles. That was almost 500 miles ahead of her closest competitor. 

All the final results are also available on the bike session standings. 

More Stats

All the numbers you don't really need, but might find interesting anyway.

Active* Men: 802

Active* Women: 635

*Active means athletes with results.

Total Bike Miles, Men: 177,063.71

Total Bike Miles, Women: 114,771.01

Average Bike Miles, Men: 220.78

Average Bike Miles, Women: 180.74

Total Bike Miles, Everyone: 291,834.72

Average Bike Miles, Everyone: 203.09

Total All Miles, Men: 232,091.75

Total All Miles, Women: 153,805.18

Total All Miles, Everyone: 385,896.93

Average All Miles, Men: 289.39

Average All Miles, Women: 242.21

Average All Miles, Everyone: 268.54

Day with highest bike miles: January 7 - 18,382.03 miles by 527 athletes = 34.88 miles per athlete

Day with most riders: January 1 - 1208 athletes, 13,846 miles = 11.46 miles per athlete

Day with longest average ride: January 31, 504 athletes, 18,026.06 miles = 35.77 miles per athlete

Sponsors

And of course let's thank all of the generous sponsor who have provided prizes for the winners: 

Hey, we all make mistakes. If you've entered your mileage incorrectly you should be able to correct it quickly and easily, right? 

As of today, correcting mileage entry errors just got a lot easier. For small errors you can still just make an additional entry to correct your error, but we've seen some really BIG errors this year and those are the ones that are harder to correct. 

For those big errors (over 100 miles) it's easier to just zero out the incorrect entry and re-enter the correct amount. If you find yourself in this situation you can do just that by going to the Show My Results page and following the instructions there.

Right now this is for athletes only but Club Reps will have this capability very soon. 

UPDATE: club reps can now also delete mileage entries.

The path is Login > Summary > Select Athlete > Select the entry to delete (by clicking the date) > Click the big scary button that says Delete this Entry.

This will come in handy if someone enters a big negative number (we've had reports of this happening spontaneously, but I've been unable to replicate this behavior) and then goes away on vacation.

Most of you have no doubt been following the results of this year’s competition pretty closely, and have been checking out the results for individual athletes. If so you’ve probably also been wondering about some of the incredible mileage recorded by some of these elite athletes, in particular by David Bowne of Jet City Tri.

David, winner of the Bike Session, has as of February 15th amassed over 8,000 miles on his bike. That’s impressive. How can anyone log so many miles so quickly, you might ask. David has kindly agreed to share his story with everyone else competing in the National Challenge Competition.

The NCC has filled a hole in David's life. Seven years ago, David was diagnosed with an illness and had to have a spinal cord implant.  Doctors advised him not to compete in or train for marathons.

Last year, David's 20 year old son was killed in a car accident.  After the tragedy, he went to a therapist and was encouraged to start working out.  David's teammate on Jet City Tri, David Bianchi, encouraged him to use the bike trainer.  He started out slowly, riding only 5 miles at a time, but has increased his mileage to the point where he has now ridden 400 miles in one day.  

David wakes up at 4:00 a.m. and rides the trainer until 7:30 a.m.  He then puts in a full work day and comes home to train again.   Weekends are long as he has logged 100 miles on Saturday & Sunday, 200 miles on a Saturday and Sunday and 400 miles on a Saturday in one session.

This year, the NCC has deeper meaning to the Jet City Tri team. The team is putting together $50 donations into a ‘winner take all’ competition, with the money going to the charity of the winner's choice. David is doing the competition in the name of his son, and if he wins (which seems likely!) his funds will go towards his son’s scholarship fund.  

David's motivation comes from his son’s love for sport. He is aiming to reach 10,019 miles by the end of the competition. The final 19 miles has a significant meaning as it was his son’s favorite number.   In the future, David plans to compete in an Ironman race.

As athletes and friends, we should all be encouraging and supporting David in his final mileage in the competition.

An important note regarding the end dates of sessions:

For club reps (or athletes) entering mileage, you will have an additional 48 hours to enter miles for each session.

Each session will close at midnight on the 2nd day after the official end of the session, based on your local time.

• Swim: midnight January 2
• Bike: midnight February 2
• Run: midnight March 2 

This also means that you will not be able to add any miles for the bike or run sessions until after the 48 hour extensions are over. Please take care when entering your mileage!

Anyone checking the standings without being logged in will see each session finish at one second past midnight Alaska time, but club reps who login will see the session extended.