Team Europcar TDF Challenge Thread

Bonjour everyone. 

Ok I think that's about all the French I learn from the one year I learnt it in high school,lol.

Anyway I've set my goas as 11 sessions for the period but may get more. I'm still basically a beginner on the bike - keep leaving it too long between getting some practice in  to really get confident on it and I'm slllllllllllow. Anyway I'm going to try getting a ride in tomorrow to kick things off - been totally lazy for the last few days - and see what happens from there.

Bonsoir tout le monde!

I'm just getting over a nasty cold, so I didn't do my long ride this weekend.  I still have a cough and a bit of congestion but hoping I can get back to my workouts this week!

My goal for this challenge will be 13 stages for a total of 15 hours of riding (900 minutes- since it'll probably be easier to track in minutes rather than hours).  The last weekend of this challenge I'll be up in Door County doing the Sprit tri up there.... From what I remember, cell phone reception is very spotty, and I'm not sure if I'll have internet access, so I will probably be updating my last weekend's total a bit late, when I get back to town that weekend.

Looking forward to this challenge!!

Bonjour to all.  I'm excited to get this challenge underway and great job to all you guys - especially newer cyclists!

I'm setting my target at 500 miles and 13 sessions.  I'm in HIM training and my big bike week falls this week, so hopefully I'll get a great head start as the weather looks great.

I started with a 45 mile hill sufferferst yesterday.

Didn't get today's ride in today - sorry team. I'm definitely getting one done tomorrow. I think my schedule saids 35 mins but I'm not totally sure.

No problem, just don't let it happen again! 

There's no spreadsheet yet, right?  I'm going to be away starting tomorrow afternoon, and I'll be offline until the following Sunday.  Unfortunately, this week is when I plan to do a ton of my riding, so I'll be updating as soon as I can, but if you don't see me updating anything I haven't left the team behind.

Hey y'all!   Glad to be on the team.  I will get some goals posted and get out on the bike today!

THANK YOU!!! Im copying it for the other teams...

Newsflash: Do not try and run a BT challenge in its first week the same time you start a new job!

Ok - just for some consistency with the formulas across all teams i have updated your team spreadsheet here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0An7ZkKfHG1L1dHpwV01KY3A1ZnUzbnlncm1TM2tGa0E#gid=0

I will add the link to the very FIRST post in this thread too!

Thanks for the updates!  I put my goals into the spreadsheet but have yet to do any of my stages yet.  I'm planning on riding Wednesday, Thursday, and Sunday this week.

Go team!

ok I finally got something done.

1.49 miles in 18:20 - did I mention how slow I am? lol.

so 1 down 10 to go or more if I can motivate myself a bit more.

well done suzie. congrats for getting out on that bike! slow don't matter: you are riding and that is fab!

btw what bikes are we all riding? i have a trusty hybrid (trek 7.2fx) which gets me to work and back but today i treated myself to a ride on my road bike (trek slr something) which was fun!

A really basic malvern star - not really sure what it is beyond that.

Here's a pic:

sorry it's so big, I don't know how to resize it, oh and it now has toe cage pedals rather than the ordinary flat ones

Good job getting started everyone.  Suzie, slow and fast are relative so never worry about the pace, just keep pedaling.

I'll be riding a ton this week but may not be able to get online to update, so don't worry when you see my numbers going nowhere!

I ride a Mercier Corvus road bike - it's a knock off bought online from bikesdirect, so a no name bike really.

I have 2 bikes.  

The one I ride more often is my "commuter" bike- it's a single speed SE Draft Lite, with flat handlebars instead of the curved ones that come on it stock (that's how I bought it used).  I ride this around the city bike commuting, though haven't done that it a while since we've been having 90-100 degree weather recently, and it seems more prudent to take the air-conditioned bus to get places if I want to look presentable when I arrive 

My racing/training bike is a Trek 5000.  I usually only do my long rides on that one though.

good call on the toe cages - you are braver than me! just a thought which might make your rides more fun (only if you can afford this) try and get your bike shop to swap your knobbly tyres for smotther ones. it'll be more energy efficient and you'll go faster!

btw i have tidied up our spreadsheet and copied goals across from the one van paulus kindly did for us. if you haven't filled out your goals yet can you do this asap?

tia

j x