Freezing Saddles: Winter Bike Challenge (sign up open)

[rcannon100]

Freezing Saddles: Winter Bike Challenge
Never Give an ELITE Cyclist an Even Break

Official Frozen Scoreboard

NOTE: Excluded activities: If you post an activity to Strava during the competition period which is not an outdoor bike ride, then it should have the string “#NoBAFS” in the activity name.

Freezing Saddles! The Epic Adventure of a band of ELITE Cyclists, facing the challenges of the wild wild wild bike paths. Confronting the darkest of evenings, the coldest of mornings, and the stupidest of Ninjas – these brave cyclists challenge each other because, if they didnt, they might have to actually do some work during the day.

The saga runs January 1 until the last day of Winter, March 20. It will conclude with a March Madness Playoff that someone will probably design. There will be a Happy Hour at the end with many pointless trophies.

Tribes (teams):

• Composed of ~5 riders or less
• For riders from the #bikedc, Washington DC Bike Forum general community (Washington DC greater metropolitan area)
• Volunteer Captains (captains will address any data problems, negotiate or cause confusion, and provide motivational seminars);
• This is a ten-gallon hat tournament. Riders will be randomly assigned to tribes based on self declared average weekly mileage and days cycled. Tribes will be created so that each tribes’s average weekly point score is roughly equal to everyone else’s. To achieve this, tribes may be composed of differing numbers of riders.
• No late sign ups.
• Interested cyclists must sign up by December 25 Midnight – Tribes will be announced within a couple days.

Scoring: Riders will receive 10 points for each day and 1 point for each mile ridden. Minimum ride is 1 mile. The tribe’s score will be the sum of the tribe members (indoor trainers do not count- you must be freezing in the saddle outside).

Backend: STRAVA (please sign up for an account, and join the “Bike Arlington” club on STRAVA – you should be able to enter data manually or automatically. Additional information will be posted here on the forum.)

This is a self organized group activity based on consensus. No one is in charge or running this thing. Participation is voluntary and entirely at your own risk.

Be Brave. Be Bold. Be…. questful! In the words of Hedley Lamarr:

Men, you are about to embark on a great crusade to stamp out runaway decency on the bike paths. Now you men will only be risking your lives, whilst I will be risking an almost certain Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

Here are the teams with the new subs

Team one
http://app.strava.com/athletes/126281
Matthew Whatley
Shawn Dread
443749
John Fisher – 608636

Team Two
Pete DeNitto – 768183
Steve Appel
James Hoofnagle
Jason Kyzer
Mega Beth – http://app.strava.com/athletes/136523
Joe Birkenstock – 1154396

Team Three
Trish Newberg
randy napiza 313677
Mark Blacknell
essigmw
obenlandk@gmail.com – http://www.strava.com/athletes/1564295

Team Four
EKR
Kel Moore
Chris Shue
Crystal Bae
Elizabeth MacGregor

Team Five
http://app.strava.com/athletes/benbhsu
307483 (Mark Williams)
Christopher Niebylski
vvill
Kevin Ulrich – http://www.strava.com/athletes/kevin_ulrich

Team Six
Arlingtonrider
sjclaeys
ejwillis@yahoo.com
http://app.strava.com/athletes/302448
feomike@gmail.com – http://www.strava.com/athletes/feomike

Team Seven
Henning Schulzrinne
klizotte
Brad Hancock
Ron Alford
Chris Randall

Team Eight
Ken Buja (1224809)
Kevin Williams, Strava # 580756, BA “GuyContinental”
Lena Varuolo
Hans Lellelid

Team Nine
Steve O
jopamora
Justin Antos (Strava 1473093)
http://app.strava.com/athletes/488016

Team Ten
certifried
strava name Karen Smith (forum poster acl)
Cyndi Janetzko
Rod Smith

Team Eleven (Freezing Saddles Team Mongo (11) on Strava)
Greg Ba
cptjohnc
rcannon100
mdevoll
Sarah Dots
Sean Chisham

Team Twelve
Calpike
BonzaiBuckaroo
Daniel Alexander
ochsendorf@gmail.com

Topic

[consularrider]

Didn’t see anyone at the Pho at 3:45, oh well.

[Rod Smith]

@consularrider 39203 wrote:

Didn’t see anyone at the Pho at 3:45, oh well.

What took ya so long?

[Arlingtonrider]

Great to see so many friends at Hains Point today and meet some new ones! Sorry I missed seeing you and meeting your trailer passenger, RCannon100!

It’s a good thing, though, that I didn’t try to go for Pho. I noticed just shortly CrystalB left that the bike felt a little sluggish, and then that my front tire was gradually flattening out and losing air. I had noticed cracks in the sides of the tires the evening before the HP100, and got confirmation today that the inexpensive tires I had bought about 3000 miles ago were shot. Luckily, REI was able to install some Gatorskins for me right away. Ready to roll again. . I even was able to make it to my friend’s afternoon party on time.

Happy New Year everyone!

[consularrider]

@Rod Smith 39205 wrote:

What took ya so long?

21 laps of East Potomac Park, and then some other riding.

[Rod Smith]

Oh another century? :rolleyes:

[rcannon100]

I think I have seen two late birds wanting to get on board.

The goal was to create ten teams with a handicap of 567.

Two teams (8 & 10) are at full compliment and are on the handicap.

All other teams are currently missing people. Team 2 and 3 are the hardiest hit. They are off the handicap by -153 and -161.

TEAMS HANDICAPS BASED ON AVERAGE NOVEMBER MILES AND DAYS RIDDEN – REFLECTING HOW FAR OFF 567 HANDICAP TEAM IS AS RESULT OF THEIR MISSING PLAYER:

TEAM 1: -36.8
TEAM 2: -152.8
TEAM 3: -160.8
TEAM 4: -62.8
TEAM 5: -72.8
TEAM 6: -52.8
TEAM 7: -88.8
TEAM 8: 2.1
TEAM 9: -87.8
TEAM 10: 1.1

PROPOSAL: Add the late sign ups to the teams that need points, removing the team members who did not sign up (if those people ever show up, they can be added to another team or on the infamous team 11). Adding additional team members should not put the team handicap over 567.

[Mikey]

I ain’t no statistitian but one point doth not a trend make. Especially when that one day was a non-commuter day. Give it time all will correct it self.

[rcannon100]

Quote Originally Posted by acl View Post
Can I get a clarification on the one mile minimum? Is that one mile per ride, or one mile per day? If one were to make two separate trips of a half mile each in the same day, would they get their 10 points for the day or not?

(asks the person with a 7-11 right at a half mile round trip from home)

@Rod Smith 39174 wrote:

Don’t sweat the small stuff. You’re on Team Ten. Yes of course it counts!

The goal of the rule is to exclude getting on your bike in your driveway, riding to the mailbox, and claiming that as a ride (unless you have a very very long driveway). Ya have to actually go for a ride. Seems like the aforementioned 1/2 mile ride to coffee places the aforementioned participant on a caffeinated gold mine. (dont sweat the small stuff. If you are riding and you are freezing, be happy – daily total > 1 counts )!

@ronwalf 39177 wrote:

Ok – then I misinterpreted this post.
If we exclude certain types of Strava activities, we need some way to implement the rule. Pretty much the only way to do this is to put something in the activity name. So here’s a proposal to (a) except, (b) reject, or (c) amend:

Excluded activities: If you post an activity to Strava during the competition period which is not an outdoor bike ride, then it should have the string “#NoBAFS” in the activity name.

I think the confusion was my fault.

On the leaderboard page, on the top, is it possible to write out any said instructions to remind people?

[KelOnWheels]

Go Team FourCuatroPho!

I didn’t make it out to Pains Hoint this morning (although I did a couple of laps this afternoon and watched the people on road bikes leave me far far faaaaaaar behind ) but I had a great time eating pho and riding with crysb and acl and Dismal Scientist later on!

[rcannon100]

@essigmw 39222 wrote:

I ain’t no statistitian but one point doth not a trend make. Especially when that one day was a non-commuter day. Give it time all will correct it self.

Er, I am not being articulate enough. This had nothing to do with today’s score (although the teams in question are in 8th and 10th place). This is just team’s handicaps based on their reported weekly averages from november and december. Remember, the goal was to create ten teams were the handicap score was almost the same. That way all teams should be competitive.

The problem is that some of the riders have just not shown up. I assumed when I said “provide me your strava user ID,” people would. Well, people didnt and now we have a number of people who cannot be found.

On team 2, that one missing person accounted for 150 of that teams handicap score. On team three, the missing person accounts for 160 points. The average rider’s handicap was 120 points. So team 2 and 3 are missing a rider who accounted for an above average portion of that teams handicap.

We also have people who want to join, whose individual handicaps are ~110. So replacing a no show with a late comer might make the game more fun.

Does that make sense.

[Arlingtonrider]

I like rcannon100’s idea for substitution team members, but I think we should set a day certain (this Friday?) by which people will need to have signed on or be dropped from their current teams. If they show up later, as mentioned, they could be on a team 11 or 12.

I don’t agree that this will take care of itself, because some of the MIAs are totally unknown to us and cannot be found on the forum, strava, or anywhere else.

[rnapiza]

@ronwalf 39177 wrote:

Ok – then I misinterpreted this post.
If we exclude certain types of Strava activities, we need some way to implement the rule. Pretty much the only way to do this is to put something in the activity name. So here’s a proposal to (a) except, (b) reject, or (c) amend:

Excluded activities: If you post an activity to Strava during the competition period which is not an outdoor bike ride, then it should have the string “#NoBAFS” in the activity name.

doh…so i got a trainer for christmas, and haven’t been out riding much…
I saw that my trainer ride yesterday put me up on the leaderboard with 20 points. (10 for mileage+10 bonus).
I’ll start throwing in “#NoBAFS” to my trainer runs…
I start a new job on monday which is closer to home, so I expect that once I get settled in, I’ll start bike commuting.

[eminva]

@rcannon100 39221 wrote:

PROPOSAL: Add the late sign ups to the teams that need points, removing the team members who did not sign up (if those people ever show up, they can be added to another team or on the infamous team 11). Adding additional team members should not put the team handicap over 567.

Yes, you should do this. I think it would be more fun if Megabeth were on a different team than Blacknell, so I say put her on Two and Laurie on Three. Although do whatever is best statistically speaking, of course.

Liz

[Bilsko]

+1 on rcannon’s proposal. Slot the latecomers on teams with the deficits and sort the rest later.

[Certifried]

I don’t know if this is a “premium” member only thing, but you can make rides “private”. So that no one can see them. People doing trainer rides could, in addition to marking their ride with the aforementioned tag, set the ride to private.

Also, I can’t even being to imagine how chaotic this all is for Rcannon and Ronwalf. I’m sure you all don’t want to hear 1,000,000,000 thank yous, but seriously, THANK YOU! I owe you both a beer (let the evil trend start! Maybe we can keep these 2 too drunk to ride LOL)

[Author]

Replies