What if we through in a daily photo contest, and awarded points for things like creativity, best shot, etc, and just had everyone vote everyday. Don't know how we would accumulate points, but thought it would be worth a shot since most of us ride with smart phones with cameras.

Thought it would give us something to look forward too everyday.

Would be no subjective way to judge it, but we'd get a lot of interesting photos to look at.

Just my two cents...

Hmmm... not sure about a daily competition/vote, but perhaps a "submission thread" in parallel - with a poll that ran on "rest days"... I know that most of the Grand Tour Rides I have my phone along, but generally, my rides are on pretty much the same route day to day, so I tend not to have many photo's to show for the rides.

Maybe we could call it the "Graham Watson" prize...

( Graham Watson - for those who don't know what the hell I'm on about... - http://www.grahamwatson.com/ - if you've looked at some still photo's of the Classics or Grand Tours over the last 25 years you WILL have seen his work at some point! IMO, he's probably the best sports photographer out there.)

For us Newbies......How to the GT challenges work?

We set up teams of up to 9 riders - each day of each of the 3 grand tours, we have to collectively ride the same distance as that day's stage. All rides to be logged via GPS and recorded either on Garmin Connect or Strava, and declared as soon as possible after the ride, showing distance (in km's - just because), "moving" time, Ascent (in metres - see reason for distance in km's) and a link to the ride log for verification.

At the end of the tour, we declare a overall winner - the person who's done the highest cumulative distance, a "Sprinters Jersey" for the person logging the highest average overall speed and a "KoM" Champion for the person with the highest overall ascent figure.

If we're really lucky we get 2-3 teams of 9 people, and there's usually a little light-hearted rivallry between teams.

Have a look at last years "Giro" entries thread and the "Signup/Discussion" thread for a better idea...

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/964334-mfp-grand-tour-cycling-challenge-discussion-signup-thread

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/978733-mfp-giro-d-italia-grand-tour-challenge-rides-only

Oh - one more thing... we usually get really cool Race Dossards

yeah, no Acrylics are injured in the production of our Dossards, but an awful lot of electrons are inconvenienced... #marginalgains

Dropbox? www.dropbox.com

does that actually have a spreadsheet "engine" behind it though - I don't want everyone who is on the challenge to have to go installing something like the MS Excel reader (if they haven't already got Excel installed of course) just for this challenge...

Gotcha...no it doesn't.

ah, that's where editgrid was cool...

http://www.editgrid.com/user/thebigyin/MFP_Giro_Challenge_2013

should be a live view, scrollable spreadsheet, that I could actually give people passwords to for editing purposes, and keep it "read only" for others... and it was pretty much 100% excel compatible (unlike google's spreadsheet for example, that doesn't implement one or two multi-page features)

Love the "Graham Watson" award and even though I ride a relatively similar route day-to-day I find myself looking for those moments of cycling life that set it apart from the ordinary - like things you miss while whizzing by at 55mph. And I'm with the other Tom, I may not be racking up huge miles so being part of a team is super great as I feel I can contribute something.

Excellent - I'm thinking we run a parallel thread for the Ride Logging and the Photo/Reports otherwise with a 3 week long thread, some of the entries will be rather image heavy to be cutting-and-pasting every day...

At the start of the year I didn't think I would want to do the Grand Tours, but doing the Classics Challenges re-ignited the fire and I'm looking forward to it. But for tracking, I have no ideas to help. .

It's supposed to be fun mate, if it becomes hard work, take a step away from it again - I doubt I'll be riding quite as consistently as last year - especially with LeTour - not expecting much in the way of riding happening the first couple of days for example.

I'll be honest, by the end of the vuelta, I just wanted to step away from the bike completely... Iirc I took a break and went hill walking for a while, then found a new (old) challenge of trying another 10 mile time trial... It's whatever you need to do to fight the drabs....

What about a little "Yanks" vs."Brits" action this year? It would take some team sign-up organization, but it might be fun. We could invite the "frogs" to have a team too. Personally I don't know any on here

I'm not 100% sure on that - aside from the problems with organizing the initial teams etc. there are a couple of problems with doing it that way.

The first is, the UK climate.. I know we bang on about this - it's a national obsession in a small island with a maritime climate. Problem is, it's not unheard of for the entire country to be "rained off" for a day, occasionally two. Okay, we don't generally get weather systems that last much longer than that, but I'd far rather see the team hit each days targets than worry about beating some other team - this is why I've been happy to have a mixed signup from all around the world in each team. Of course, "the former colonies" aren't immune to bad/adverse riding weather either, but there's a hell of a spread of climates and regions in that big bit of land you lot occupy - it's unlikely that someone in Arizona will get the same climatic conditions as Colorado or Illinois. On the other hand for example - there's maybe a 70 mile radius would cover 5 of the UK riders. (Myself,katozdad,cloggsy71,frannybobs and Jakess1971) with possiby another couple within a 100 mile radius.

The second is pretty much time-zone related. We're between 4-8 hours in front over here, so if we log our rides straight after finishing, we're pretty much giving you all a target to shoot at... I'd hate to discourage people from actually logging promptly, as hanging around waiting for the data is a pain in the backside for me, so that's an advantage we'd just have to hand over.

The third is that frankly, I don't want this to become so competitive that people are actually discouraged from joining "because I don't do enough km's, and don't want to let my country down..." - and I know now that there are a few people that have been entering these challenges for the last couple of years who get to the end of the challenge and message me with a "sorry I didn't ride as much as everyone else" note... they'd most likely not join if they thought that it'd somehow "let the side down" - so for that reason only I'm against national teams

And the fourth is purely selfish - I've a couple of long-term friends on here, from over the pond, who I really like to be on the same team as.

So - from my viewpoint, I'd rather not - but if everyone else thinks its a good idea - I'll not refuse to do it outright - but if there are over 18 signups, put me down for the "foreign legion" team made up of the non-aligned factions - all nations welcome.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it...

I'm looking to try and bring something extra to it, rather than change things - thats why I kind of like the Graham Watson prize... it doesn't screw with the basics, but gives a bit of extra depth/richness to the experience. Plus of course, I'm hoping for some interesting shots from Alan in the first 3 days of the Giro... can't imagine that he's not going to "bump into some other blokes out for a run" on those 3 days...