BAFS 2020 teams and rules discussion

[AlexBikeCommute]

@bentbike33 194263 wrote:

Your saddle may already have frozen these past 2 days, but Freezings Saddles does not officially begin until January 1.

Cool, thanks. When does team sign-up open, and when does assignment happen?

[Steve O]

@AlexBikeCommute 194265 wrote:

Cool, thanks. When does team sign-up open, and when does assignment happen?

Sign up generally opens around Thanksgiving and closes 3-4 weeks later. Assignments occur at the initial happy hour, which I believe is still TBD.

[Steve O]

So this is the year we’ve been waiting for. Yes, as pointed out several years ago, 2020 is the leap year that creates a question about the end date for Freezing Saddles.

Freezing Saddles has always ended on the last full day of winter, which has been March 19 for every year so far. In 2016 that made FS an extra day long (79 days rather than 78), because February had 29 days

Winter ends and spring begins at 11:49 PM EDT on March 19, 2020, which makes March 18 the last full day of winter.
Options include:

• Keep FS 78 days long, retain the “last full day of winter” guideline, and end at midnight on March 18
• End at the exact end of winter: 11:49 pm on March 19 (the FSLNHPP would have to start 11 minutes earlier I suppose)
• End at midnight on Thursday, March 19, slopping over slightly into spring, making FS 79 days long as it was in 2016, retaining the traditional end date of March 19

(BTW – this issue will not arise again in most of our lifetimes. Looking forward, spring starts on March 20 EDT for several decades)

[josh]

@Steve O 194267 wrote:

So this is the year we’ve been waiting for. Yes, as pointed out several years ago, 2020 is the leap year that creates a question about the end date for Freezing Saddles.

Freezing Saddles has always ended on the last full day of winter, which has been March 19 for every year so far. In 2016 that made FS an extra day long (79 days rather than 78), because February had 29 days

Winter ends and spring begins at 11:49 PM EDT on March 19, 2020, which makes March 18 the last full day of winter.
Options include:

• Keep FS 78 days long, retain the “last full day of winter” guideline, and end at midnight on March 18
• End at the exact end of winter: 11:49 pm on March 19 (the FSLNHPP would have to start 11 minutes earlier I suppose)
• End at midnight on Thursday, March 19, slopping over slightly into spring, making FS 79 days long as it was in 2016, retaining the traditional end date of March 19

(BTW – this issue will not arise again in most of our lifetimes. Looking forward, spring starts on March 20 EDT for several decades)

Not a hard question IMO — go with the “last day of winter”, and end at midnight on March 19th (option #3). 11 minutes of spring isn’t going to bother anyone.

[jrenaut]

@josh 194268 wrote:

11 minutes of spring isn’t going to bother anyone.

Have you MET anyone?

[Nadine]

@Steve O 193891 wrote:

I think this is fairly common among “veteran” players. Freezing Saddles has little additional affect on how much many of us ride, because earlier years playing the game got us in the winter groove.
Keeping that in mind, it makes sense to think more about the newbies than the vets in regards to devising scoring schemes.

Hmm this isn’t true for me. I’ve done FS for 3 years, and still….. Every single November right about now when it first gets cold I freak out abs probably have 1-2 really low biking weeks. My husband has confirmed that every (probably mid) November I say “Omg, I bike in THIS?” I’ve been doing that since before I discovered FS. I just hafta get through that I guess. This year I baked a lot that week…. [emoji2368]

I did bike through the winter before FS, though it was a royal pain finding company, which is often a deal breaker for me….. Also before FS I rode in winter only on the nice days. That was about 3 days/ 70 miles week. (When I lived in MA – college until 03 – it was more like once a week in winter, & closer to 10 miles.)

Last year (fs2019) my miles were DOWN because of the 100 mile /week team points contribution cap. Turns out that the team points contribution is my main motivator – and if riding >100 miles / week won’t help my team, I usually won’t bother. (Exceptions are when it’s a beautiful day and /or I hafta get somewhere, and /or there’s a nice group ride planned.)

Anyhow my point is, I think FS continues to be important for some of us “veterans” every year. Maybe some of us are slower to get the message. I think in my case the community is essential.

It’s certainly gonna be more of a total revelation to the newbies, but I bet FS continues to be an important motivator for a lot of seasoned players as well.

Oh and I support either no mileage cap or 150+.

[emoji16][emoji2186][emoji106] Nadine

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[ShawnoftheDread]

So you’re asking if we should skip 23 hours and 49 minutes of winter or allow 11 minutes of spring? What kind of wimpy question is that?

[Nadine]

@ShawnoftheDread 194277 wrote:

So you’re asking if we should skip 23 hours and 49 minutes of winter or allow 11 minutes of spring? What kind of wimpy question is that?

[emoji38] I vote for more FS days, so either let a li’l spring in our let’s start NOW! [emoji1][emoji2187][emoji2186][emoji2223][emoji3063]

[emoji2186][emoji3063][emoji2368][emoji16]

[Steve O]

@ShawnoftheDread 194277 wrote:

So you’re asking if we should skip 23 hours and 49 minutes of winter or allow 11 minutes of spring? What kind of wimpy question is that?

Every year we skip some winter. Last year we wimpily skipped about 18 hours.

[ShawnoftheDread]

@Steve O 194281 wrote:

Every year we skip some winter. Last year we wimpily skipped about 18 hours.

And I was against it. It’s bad enough we don’t start on the first day of winter.

[BobCochran]

Hi!

I see I’m really late to the discussion thread. Speaking for myself, I recall that last year I didn’t often come close to the mileage cap. I’m fairly indifferent to a cap on miles. I’ve skimmed parts of this thread and find myself agreeing with Steve O: it would be good to get new riders to try out winter bicycling. You can’t do that by tossing out the low or non- performers. I guess I am okay with how teams are created. I live in Greenbelt and as I recall, several of the members of the team I was assigned to lived in Virginia and at least one person was in Baltimore…maybe two? To me, that made it much harder for everyone to meet. Riding to a meeting spot in Virginia would have been a major trip for me, and even more so for the Baltimore participants. On the other hand we did have pretty good communication among team members as a Strava group. I think. Meeting team members is much, much easier if they are local to me…but I still benefit from a more distributed team composition even if I can’t meet them…so no complaints.

I’m stocking up on HotHands, and waiting breathlessly for registration to open.

Thanks so much

Bob

[musclys]

Rather than asking whether people want to be on a Maryland team, or DC, or Virginia, what if the registration form just asked “Where do you live?” and “Where do you work?,” and “Would you rather be on a team with folks who live near you or work near you?” The more localized the better. Despite riding 150-200 miles a week during the winter, my ONLY interest in FS is meeting new folks, and that is terribly unlikely if we aren’t all commuting to or from the same area.

[Steve O]

@musclys 194342 wrote:

Rather than asking whether people want to be on a Maryland team, or DC, or Virginia, what if the registration form just asked “Where do you live?” and “Where do you work?,” and “Would you rather be on a team with folks who live near you or work near you?” The more localized the better. Despite riding 150-200 miles a week during the winter, my ONLY interest in FS is meeting new folks, and that is terribly unlikely if we aren’t all commuting to or from the same area.

I believe the registration form asks for your home zip code. And also asks the regional question.

It does not ask for your work zip code, AFAIK.

[musclys]

My point is both home location and work location matter. But, more importantly, asking “Would you rather be on a team with folks who live near you or work near you?” allows riders to ID whether they are more likely to be able to join a team gathering near work or near home. It also would allow for much more granular filtering of players into teams than superregional categories.

[Steve O]

Poll regarding the end date for Freezing Saddles is here.

[Author]

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