Frequently Asked Questions
It is essential that you follow the rules of the road and respect your fellow road users at all times. You must wear a cycling helmet during your rides and we highly recommend that you wear an identification wristband with your contact and medical information on such as blood type in case of an accident. We also highly recommend that you bring a mobile phone with you in case you need to phone for help. It is good practice to bring key essential bike repair equipment with you on your ride such as spare inner tubes, tyre levers and multi tool.
You must follow the government guidelines on riding with others. If it is legal to do so, we encourage you to ride with your friends and team mates to push each other on and go for the best time possible.
If you have Strava premium, you can get live results by going to the relative Strava stage or segment and filtering by members of the Tour of Cheshire West Strava page. We will also be posting updated results on the Tour of Cheshire West Facebook page and doing a monthly email.
Please find all the information required to upload a ride to Strava here
This is to ensure that there is something for everyone riding the tour. The hillier stages will suit the lighter rider whereas the flatter stages will be better for those who can put out more power.
This will depend on your cycling ability but each stage should take around 15-60minutes. The stages have been designed to be relatively short so that everyone can find time to fit in at least one ride per month whilst balancing family and work commitments.
You can use any bicycle that you wish as long as it is not electrically powered!
Each stage is open for just less than one month. We will neutralise the race on the final day of each month to enable us to get the results from Strava before they disappear. Any rides you do on the final day of each month will unfortunately not count towards your time for the tour.
No, you can ride each stage or segment as many times as you like during the month. Your best time for each stage or segment will be recorded on Strava and this is the result that we will use on the results page.
It is intended as a stage race, but, you can just ride the segment that you are targeting without the need to ride the entire stage.
The routes are spread out to show off the many beautiful areas within Cheshire West. We hope that the tour will take you to some parts of Cheshire West that you don’t normally cycle and try new routes that you wouldn’t normally consider.
Yes, half of the money raised will go to the fantastic Bren Project. The Bren Project is a small, independent charity offering people with learning disabilities and autism the opportunity to experience supported, bespoke work placements in Chester and the surrounding area. If you every need any work doing on your bike, we can highly recommend them! You can find out more about the work they do here.
Results will only count for the specified stage for that month. This is so that we can get the results from Strava and have a live leader board that everyone can track.
The routes have been specifically designed to follow quiet roads and there are no traffic lights on any of the stages. The vast majority of the turns are left hand turns to make it easier to merge with oncoming traffic. There are a few right hand turns during the tour but these are rare and on extremely quite roads but please take extra care in these situations. In the unlikely event that you get stuck behind traffic, you must ride safely and follow the rules of the road. You will probably only lose a few seconds and it’s not worth risking your life or the safety of others over. Always remember that you can ride each stage as many times as you want during the month so you can always give it another go at different time.
This is mirroring the Tour de France where the hardest and most prestigious stage is known as the Queen stage. We will be offering bonus points for this stage for the sprint and KOM competitions. Instead of the usual point scoring system – 250, 245, 240, 235, 234 etc, stage four points will be awarded as 300, 290, 280, 270, 269 etc.
Yes, there will be a trophy for the Male and Female winners of the General Classification, KOM and Sprint competitions as well as a trophy for the winner of the team competition.
You will ride the entirety of each stage in one go as fast as you can. We will then add up your times from the five stages and the rider with the lowest overall time will be declared the winner.
Within each stage there is a shorter KOM and sprint segment competition. These are competitions based on points rather than time. You will be awarded points based on your position within each segment. The person with the most points at the end of the five stages will be declared the winner for that competition. The winner of each stage will be awarded 250 points with 2nd getting 245 and 3rd receiving 240. Fourth place will get 235 points with each subsequent place receiving one point less – eg 5th place = 234 point & 8th = 231 points etc.
The three fastest riders time from each team will be added together and go towards the team competition for that month. The team with the lowest overall time after the five stages will be declared the winner of the team competition.
You can ride as an un-affiliated rider, or if you wish by signing up with the same team name you can make your own team, that will count on the team results.
You can have as many members in your team as you like. We encourage you to sign up with your club name such as “Chester Road Club” or “Total Tri Training” etc but you can always form separate teams from within your club or just with your friends.
Half of the money raised will go to the Bren Project our Charity partner supporting individuals with autism and learning disabilities.
Some of the funds raised will pay for the use of the external Nifty entries site.
We will use some of the funds to pay for prizes.
The rest of the money goes to the running of Chester Triathlon Club.
Those of us organising the event do not make any money from it and we do it voluntarily.
Yes, if you would like to join a different team or form a new team with some of your friends, then e-mail bike@nullchestertri.org.uk with your request and we can edit this for you. Ideally any team changes should be make before the end of stage 1.
If you miss or are unable to ride one of the stages, you will be awarded the same time as the slowest rider plus an additional 5 minute penalty
Yes there is, this year we will be awarding an age group trophy for the winners of the over 50’s male and female GC competition