The Official June "Ride Lot's Cycling Challenge" Sign-up Thread

Ok, here’s where you officially sign up for the June “Ride Lots! Cycling Challenge.”

A lot of good ideas on other threads, so what you’re going to see here is a compromise between those that wanted a charity benefit like last month and some that wanted a team challenge (male vs. female) like the swim challenge. There was a small but growing contingency that wanted multiple teams, maybe we can flesh out the details this month and do something like that in July.

As I said, this will be the guys against the girls. Two of the most trash-talking rah-rah BTers out there have agreed to captain their respective teams: Karl (Motivated) on the guys team and Renee (Renee) on the ladies. Efforts are underway now to pick names for the respective teams. I will be the neutral, probably non-participating referee and scorekeeper. In the meantime, here are the ground rules.

Goals

• In this thread, state your mileage goal for the month, June 1-30 inclusive.
• Set your goals based on actual outside mileage (no trainers or spin classes) for the entire month of June, including what you have ridden to date. If you anticipate that you will spend a portion of your time on the trainer, stationary bike, or spinning bike, do not include that in mileage goal as it will not count.
• Your goal (at a minimum) has to be the lesser of:
• Last month’s cycling miles plus 20%
• 500 miles.
• The captain of the opposing team will have the discretion to approve any exceptions.

Pledge

• Also in this thread, you will state the maximum amount of your pledge. This will be the amount that you donate to the designated charity should you NOT make your goal and your team loses.
• If you make your individual goal, but your team loses anyway, you will donate half of your pledge to the designated charity.
• Participation is strictly voluntary, as is the payment of your pledge (honor system!). This is just a little challenge among friends, and in no way constitutes gambling. BT.com is not involved with this in any way except as a communication medium via these discussion boards.

Same scoring method as the swim challenge, we will average each individual’s percentage of completion to get a team average, throwing out the highest and lowest individual completion percentage.

The two teams, through their captains, will each designate a single beneficiary charity. The losing team will make donations to the charity selected by the winning team. I would recommend using last month’s guidelines in selecting a charity:

• Must at a minimum be through a BT.com REGULAR (i.e., having been here at least 30 days with at least 50 posts);
• Must be doing an athletic event (bike ride, triathlon, etc.) as a fundraiser for a bona fide charity (may be subject to a validity check if not nationally known/recognized)
• Must have an online donations page to facilitate collection of pledges.

 but at a minimum limit it to a nationally known organization that takes online donations.

 I probably forgot some stuff, so any changes or additions to the rules will be by mutual agreement of the two team captains.