2017 Freezing Saddles Thread #1

@hozn 147867 wrote:

I would like to disallow manual entries, though. If you want to get creative you can always construct GPX files and upload them (you could do this in Strava too to get around their prohibition of manual rides for all their competitions).

As someone who does not own any devices to record my location, track, or route, nor desire to own one (or be tracked), I very much enjoyed the manual entry option and it was the only way I was able to be part of Freezing Saddles last year. I did the same few routes (to and from work, the gym, the Farmer’s market, etc.), so plugging in the known mileage was great. I put in a lot of miles (and would have done more if work didn’t, unexpectedly, have me traveling for 7 weeks in a row) for my team and enjoyed that (and finished in the top 80 or 90, despite missing 21 days of points). I conversed with the team both through these pages and Strava, and I made it to the final Happy Hour, so I think there wasn’t anything that the manual entry really hindered in my enjoyment or participation.

There were a few things it might have been nice to have been counted towards (Hains Point laps, cold days), but not enough for me to want to own another piece of electronic equipment. Other than for including in some of the extra games, what is the problem with manual entries?

@Steve O 147919 wrote:

Looking at last year’s results that would have knocked out the bottom 25 riders, about 10%. Actually it would have been somewhat more than that if we assume some others had fallen short earlier in the game but did a lot of March riding.
That seems like a reasonably low bar:

• 4 sleaze rides or
• 3 days/12 miles or
• 2 days/22 miles.

Perhaps someone could do the coding to check, but I strongly suspect that lots of people would have dropped before March based on this. Lots of people simply did not bother with sleazing, and sometimes did almost zero riding in a given week (weather, illness, work issues, family, etc), then got back into things again in a later week. I know the spirit of freezing saddles is to ride no matter what, no matter how, but I think the number of people who manage to stick to that is far lower than 90%. Probably well under half of last year’s competitors.

@hozn 147867 wrote:

And FWIW I tend to agree with SteveO that the slackers team probably doesn’t need to exist.

Don’t have to worry about losing hozn if we get rid of the slackers.

@DrP 147921 wrote:

There were a few things it might have been nice to have been counted towards (Hains Point laps, cold days), but not enough for me to want to own another piece of electronic equipment. Other than for including in some of the extra games, what is the problem with manual entries?

So this is mostly about removing exceptions for the sake of keeping the code simple and also removing what has proven to be one of the larger support burdens (people mis-entering manual rides so they appeared to be riding at the speed of light, etc.). I’m not saying this was a huge problem last year, but with a large enough competition base those sorts of things are bound to happen. Excluding manual rides, just lessens any support burden, and simplifies logic in doing charting/pointless prize calculations (we don’t have to remember to exclude manual entries from all those leaderboards).

And manual ride exclusion is standard practice for any Strava competitions. Freezing Saddles is trying to be more than National Bike Challenge. This isn’t just about how far people ride, or at least I’d like to help evolve that idea. I love some of the alternative scoring algorithms proposed; some of which relied on weather data (“Freeze Points”). Ultimately, the people who ride 350 miles a week are probably also going to be the ones that end up on the top of freeze-point leaderboards, but it does make the competition more interesting.

We also want to add group-ride tracking, so we can see who is riding with whom (not sure whether for prizes or just for general information about the social side of the competition). Obviously, that also requires non-manual rides.

I’m sure there are a number of people on the forum that will loan you a cellphone or GPS device (I might even have a Garmin you can borrow, though it didn’t do a very good job for SteveO) for the competition. Or you can get GPS cycling computers for under $100 now. Or GPS-equipped cellphones probably for even less. I understand that not everyone wants to have this sort of ride data publicly available; Strava supports both private rides (which we do still count, though that can also introduce a sensitivity for leaderboards) and general privacy requiring you to approve followers for seeing any of your rides.

And with regard to the point about Strava or devices malfunctioning, I think this is a problem shared by everyone pretty equally. If there is someone that never has their GPS device freeze up or produce a garbage ride, I’d love to buy that GPS device! My Garmin 1000 throws away a ride every couple weeks lately.

For those truly dedicated to manual entries, you could always map out your ride in ridewithgps.com (or maybe there’s a better tool for actually mapping a *ride* rather than an abstract *route*) and then upload it. While this is still a manual ride (and might not be allowed to count on Strava competitions, if discovered), the point here is really to standardize on the data and not to penalize people who forget to hit “Start” or have their device malfunction.

@DrP 147921 wrote:

As someone who does not own any devices to record my location, track, or route, nor desire to own one (or be tracked), I very much enjoyed the manual entry option and it was the only way I was able to be part of Freezing Saddles last year. I did the same few routes (to and from work, the gym, the Farmer’s market, etc.), so plugging in the known mileage was great. I put in a lot of miles (and would have done more if work didn’t, unexpectedly, have me traveling for 7 weeks in a row) for my team and enjoyed that (and finished in the top 80 or 90, despite missing 21 days of points). I conversed with the team both through these pages and Strava, and I made it to the final Happy Hour, so I think there wasn’t anything that the manual entry really hindered in my enjoyment or participation.

There were a few things it might have been nice to have been counted towards (Hains Point laps, cold days), but not enough for me to want to own another piece of electronic equipment. Other than for including in some of the extra games, what is the problem with manual entries?

Understand your desire to not being tracked, but you are imposing a cost of extra work on the volunteer(s) who run the website by only doing manual entries. Every choice has its costs, so maybe you need to weigh the importance of only making manual entries with the importance of participating in Freezing Saddles. A suggestion that I made last year for those who only want to make manual entries is that they somehow compensate those who need to do the extra work as a result.