Billy Goat, Inidivual (Elevation Gain)

[bob_dc]

Hello there fellow freezing saddles persons.

The title of this message was copy’d n pasted from the freezing saddles website. I like that “Individual” is misspelled (see subject title), perhaps because it shows we aren’t taking it too seriously.

I currently am leading the competition (is that what it is?) but I’m not sure I want to! Well, I was for awhile, and I was doing many hilly (repeats) rides. First, I’m not sure if there are rules here, please respond if so that I may be schooled.

I experimented with different routes and hills .. I found a nice “u shaped” hill (and another half-mile loop) that I did over and over again. It is still hard riding. It is also very boring. Also, I got lots of dog walkers looking at me funny. More than once I had to explain to someone what I was doing. Some dogs don’t seem to like it, and their owners possibly also. So .. I’m not really doing that anymore because .. I want to do more “normal” crazy rides if that makes sense.

But, perhaps also, I might get interested again if I get close to others, which seems likely to happen.

I am at 90 ft/mile (I was at 98 ft/mile before I gave up the hill repeats). That likely will be lower by the time you read this. There are two in the 70 ft/mile range and at least three in the 60 ft/mile range. My hats off to those in the 60 ft/mile range because their mileage is so much greater than mine. Interestingly, two of those gentlemen are on my team (GO TEAM 17!). By-the-way .. Team 17, we need a better name I think.

The last thing I’ll say about it is, the more miles you have the harder it is to increase ft/mile. So I may just ride myself out of this “competition” regardless. With that said I’d like to propose some sort of ft/mile “quotient” that considers those with MORE miles as being more difficult. I’m not a math person so not sure what that formula might be. Maybe, with every hundred miles ridden, the “ft/mile” quotient could increase by a certain percentage? Anyone good with the logarithmic scale?

Bob

Topic

[merlin]

Billygoat does encourage a particularly idiosyncratic riding style. To reduce the degree to which it discourages distance you could change from ascent/distance to ascent/distance^q for some q less than one. For example, at q = .5, 100 feet in one mile would be equivalent to 316 feet in 10 miles. At about .6, Nigel Brockton jumps to #1 and stays there all the way down to about .1 when Chris Watson goes to #1. It would be hard to defend any particular choice of q, unless you just chose that value that pushed you out of first place..

[bob_dc]

@merlin 216670 wrote:

Billygoat does encourage a particularly idiosyncratic riding style. To reduce the degree to which it discourages distance you could change from ascent/distance to ascent/distance^q for some q less than one. For example, at q = .5, 100 feet in one mile would be equivalent to 316 feet in 10 miles. At about .6, Nigel Brockton jumps to #1 and stays there all the way down to about .1 when Chris Watson goes to #1. It would be hard to defend any particular choice of q, unless you just chose that value that pushed you out of first place..

I’m sure to be out of 1st soon enough. I’m cool with that!

I don’t know if J.C. or Brad (from a few freezing saddles ago, I think my mind has purposely forgotten when) are doing BAFS this year, I think not as I follow them on Strava. We had a stupid run and it went down to the last hour back in the first year of that pointless prize. Something like 114 Ft/Mile. I’m NOT doing that again.

I’m not sure what an appropriate “quotient” is. I’m sure there is a fair formula, but then it becomes a different animal than purely a feet-per-mile competition.

Thinking about it more, I think it would be better if there was a minimum mile bar. Maybe 1000 miles? It is so very easy to raise the ft/mile ratio if you don’t have many miles. There should be more motivation not just to put up elevation but also distance.

At a 1000 mile minimum we would NOW have a very interesting competition between three or four riders. And I’d like to be motivated to ride another 400 miles also before BAFS ends!

Bob

[bob_dc]

Oh .. by-the-way. I see someone else is leading it now. They got 7000 ft climbing on a 8 mile bike ride. Wow!! Data error?!

Bob

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