The Cycle Academy Century Challenge is an achievement program within the Cycle Academy educational system. It is used to promote and reward the use of bicycles for exercise, recreation, and transportation. The Century Challenge focuses on cumulative ride distances as well as using your bike to make short trips to the park, the pool, a friend’s house, and school. You will also receive credit for rides you take with friends and family members.

How does it work?

Unlike the core Cycle Academy program, which uses merit badges to indicate skill proficiency (“I know this”), the Century Challenge uses collectable stickers to indicate activity completion (“I did this”). There are 24 total activity challenges in the Century Challenge.

You have two primary distance goals, a Century and a Super Century. A Century is 100 kilometers and a Super Century is 100 miles. You will achieve these distances by adding up all of your rides after you start the program, and you can begin collecting the challenge stickers for shorter distances along the way.

In addition to the distance goals, there are two sets of activity challenges to complete. One is the “I rode my bike to…” set, in which you earn challenge stickers by riding to destinations such as the park, the pool, your friend’s house, and school. The other is the “I rode my bike with…” set, where stickers are earned by going on rides with a friends, family members, classmates, teachers, etc.

Each time you go on a ride, you will record the ride date, the distance ridden in both miles and kilometers, and the total number of miles and kilometers you have ridden since you started. You can use a tracking app if you have a smart phone or type your starting point and destination into http://maps.google.com/ to calculate the distance you traveled.

If you complete a distance challenge or one or more activity challenges, you will record those with the ride record. When you receive the challenge sticker for achieving those goals, you’ll attach it to the associated challenge circle on the front of the log sheet. All of these challenges can be completed as slowly or as quickly as you like, and with the activity challenges, in any order that you choose.