Fifth Annual Tour De France Challenge Announcement

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 Fifth Tour De France Challenge from July 2-24 2011

The perfect fit for newbies and veterans alike... all you have to do is work out the number of bike sessions (tour stages) you are going to ride between 2-24 July AND either a distance OR time goal for the 23 day time period.

Teams will be based on the 2011 Tour De France peloton and be announced before the event.. then you can spend a glorious 3 weeks riding to your own grand tour glory!

You can request a favourite team but lineups will be balanced so first in best dressed so to speak. If you have a second preference let me know that when you sign up.

So.. what are you waiting for? Sign up for the fifth annual Tour De France Challenge here on Bt by hitting reply to this message!!!

See you in July,

Super Cat

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.