That is so, but the others in team B may not be amused by starting late and being on the bottom of the pack.

I have a few 6 month challenges coming up. Why not wait as long as possible and join on the last day?

Where do you draw the line? Somebody else will make a different one.

A team's credits should be counted either from the start of the race, or if they join late, from the time they join. This way, teams who either found out late or had troubles entering in the first place and still participate. It took us almost a week just to get things set up to be able to join ANYTHING, but by the time we found out that we could, it was 3 hours after the winter xmas race started. I don’t think it’s fair to my team or other teams whose captain is on vacation, left the team, or is otherwise not able to join the team in a race. We spent a lot of time and effort to be able to join the xmas race, but it didn’t help us one bit now.

New challenges come up all of the time. I joined another Christmas challenge starting tomorrow, and set up a 5 shopping days til Xmas challenge running from Dec 20 to Dec 24. That's about all I can do as an individual, try to set the challenges far enough out that you can join. Some didn't have much lead time, because I was testing the challenges themselves. It's not possible yet to start a challenge in 2008.

As yet, there's no handicapping system to level the playing field. The largest team could win any challenge that they wish to enter.

They could, but the idea was gate crashing ON PURPOSE if the challenge has no beginning date.

Why should the challenge have an end date either? Just keep going until most of the teams decide they've had enough or they call more in to join. It could become a "relay race challenge" if the "base camp" group of members get in. They move back and forth from team to team, goosing their stats up for a month. Then they move on to another. They visited the vultures one month. November was MOT month. December will likely be somewhere else.

Your same argument about joining should be applied to both ends. The challenge could be some entity like a team that can be both joined and retired from.

It would be easy enough to do that NOW with a CHALLENGE TEAM. You would have to drop out of your existing team and start the challenge team as captain. Stay there as long as you want. Invite others. Start a challenge colony over there. Some might retire and go elsewhere. Keep the challenge team going. It would end when the last member (including the captain) retired. Accumulation of points/run time/results would end.

Another challenge team could challenge your established record by forming themselves to beat it. There you go -- challenge team challenges. They would be closer to series challenges than these strictly parallel challenges with fixed beginning and ending dates.

Challenge teams could even join THESE challenges, you know.

Courine said:

"Ever thought it would be nice if the team captains could yell at each other during races? Whether it be champagne or bag of flaming dog dung, it should help to set the mood."

Why not create a Team Challenge Smack Talk thread?