Guest blog from Debbie Lang – Debbie is well known to many people who love cycling – her career began as cycling champion back in the day at North Shore City Council; she became North Shore cycling person when AT was formed 4 years ago. She is now in the role that best suits her superb talents for collaboration and innovation – she has a team planning and delivering walking and cycling events and behaviour change in AT’S new Walking and Cycling team led by Kathryn King.
Kathryn dropped in to our February Art Gallery cycling breakfast, so she’s meeting people who’re out and about cycling already. She will be our guest speaker at Cycle Action’s March meeting on Thursday, 26th March. Mark it in your diary, now.
Here’s Debbie’s message – 
I’m writing to let you know about a new initiative to get more people cycling, called the Love to Ride NZ Challenge. Auckland Transport is supporting the Challenge as an official partner for Auckland.
Through the Love to Ride NZ website, people create teams and invite their friends to join. Points are awarded to teams and people based on how much riding they do, and – most importantly – they also get points for encouraging other people to ride. It caters to every level from people new to riding, to occasional riders, to the super-fit road cyclists.
If you want to help, please send the email below to contacts/colleagues/friends that may be interested in this new cycling initiative. 
“Hello,
It is time to get more people riding bikes in NZ. We know riding is awesome – you feel great, it’s good for you, good for our planet, and it’s fun! But we need more people to discover how easy and enjoyable riding can be.
Love to Ride is a new online platform that makes it fun and easy for us to get more of our friends riding. From 6 to 31 March, Love to Ride is running a new team-based challenge.
How it works:
• Start or join a team
• Ride! Log your rides to increase your team’s score
• Encourage others to ride too
• Score points and win great prizes!
A chart on the LoveToRide website lists the number of points scored for each km ridden, group rides undertaken, new riders joined to the challenge etc – eg a new rider = gains you 100 points.
Every 100 points you earn gets you another entry into the prize draw. The more points you earn, the more chances you have of winning a prize.
Prizes include a new bike (worth $1,000), a holiday for two, bike gear (worth $2000), and a night for two in a lighthouse and a stone tower!
Find out more, view prizes and check out the new Love to Ride NZ site at www.lovetoride.net/auckland“
Please help Debbie spread the word on this new programme to grow the love of cycling
