Why we love encouraging

At Love to Ride, our objective is to get more people riding bikes. And we love to get riders on board with our mission. Although we shout as loud as we can about the benefits of riding a bike, we understand it’s the voices of friends, family and co-workers that echo loudest in the ears of new riders. That’s why we introduced encouraging.

Encouraging is all about using the most powerful voice - yours - to inspire others to ride. More people biking benefits all of us, therefore we want to reward people who spread the word about it.

What is the impact of encouraging?

Take Anne Heins for example. Anne worked with us to get more people riding in Christchurch, NZ. Through outreach to community groups, workplaces and individuals, Anne encouraged a total of 136 people to join Love to Ride. As a result, four times more people ended up joining the biking community.

The impact of this encouragement went beyond more people enjoying bike rides. As a result of those bike trips, more than 37,900kg of CO2 was prevented from entering the atmosphere. That’s the equivalent of a 94,000 mile car journey!

Infographic displaying miles ridden and CO2 saved through encouraging

Why do we offer points for people who encourage?

We want to reward people for doing something amazing in the biking community, namely, helping it grow and flourish.

Love to Ride has one mission: to get more people riding bikes. When riders, like you, spread the word and get more people to take part in our programs, we’re given the opportunity to have more impact.

If we all encouraged at least one new person to ride a bike, we’d double the rate of cycling. That would provide HUGE benefits to local communities, including:

Less congestion on the roads
Cleaner air
More happy and healthy bike riders

We want to pay back to those who contribute to our goals. Therefore, if you reward the biking community by recruiting new folks to ride, we’ll reward you by giving you mega points!

How do I encourage someone to ride?

To encourage someone else, simply send them to Love to Ride and ask that they list you as their encourager.

During a Love to Ride challenge, you can list someone as your encourager in one of the following ways:

Manually add your encourager from the link beneath your photo on your profile page
Select your encourager from a list after you log your first challenge ride
Invite someone to join using your unique link. When the log their first ride, you get the credit.

You can find out more about encouraging in our FAQs.