Tour De France Challenge - the 8th Edition

Starting this, because who doesn't want more incentive to ride their bike?  Borrowing a lot of this from last year's post.

Riding a bike in July? Any bike at all? (Road bike, mountain bike, exercise bike, spin bike, unicycle, maybe a paddleboat?) 

Then sign up below for the Eighth Tour De France Challenge from July 5th - July 27th

So like previous TdF challenges, you'll sign up by stating how many stages you'll ride along with a distance or time goal.  This way newbies have just as much of a chance to "win" as veterans.

The rules will be the same as last year.

Challenge Rules: 

1. The winning team will be determined by the overall % of goal amount of stages and % of distance/time achieved by the team. (each goal counts for 50% of your overall goal achieved) 

2. Riders must complete a minimum of 15 minutes ride time per session for the stage to be counted against their committed stages. 

3. Goals are capped at 100% - you can INCREASE your goal at any time 

4. If your commute (one way) is less than 15 minutes... then you can combine the two commutes as one stage for the purposes of this tour. If you wish for each of your bike commutes to count as two stages (and they are longer than 15 minutes) then you should log them as two separate rides in your training log. 

5. You can ride more than once on one day if you wish to, just make sure that they are logged as separate rides in your log. 

6. Stages must be logged in the riders BT logs for verification 

8. If you have a temporary set back such as an illness (i.e a cold) then I will be using the following equation to calculate your goal reduction (if required). Total Goal/23 days (of the challenge) * number of days out of action = goal reduction for the challenge. 

9. 24 hour BAN (code of silence) on discussing action from the Tour in your team thread. This applies (basically) from when one stage starts to when the next stage finishes... (I will be posting reminders on this regularly) 

10. Team leaders will be nominated by each team and will be responsible for reminding team members to log their progress in google spreadsheets and leading the cheer-leading to help everyone reach their goals. 

Friendly banter and sledging is encouraged, pledging team allegiance through signature lines, log titles and avatars is also encouraged.

There wasn't a whole lot of interest in the thread in the Peloton forum about this, so I considered adding a twist to it.  If we don't have enough entrants to do teams, then maybe we can all race as individuals with a rider of choice as our Tour proxy.  In case there are enough people to make teams, select one as well.

For example

I'll ride for Trek Factory Racing as Fabian Cancellara.

Still working on how many stages and how much riding I'm going to do.

Who else is in?!