Freezing Saddles 2014 Discussion Draft

[rcannon100]

Freezing Saddles 2014 Discussion Draft – okay, we learned a lot last year.

Freezing Saddles is a community driven event generated by the good folk of the BA Bike Forum. It is not run or sponsored by any org. It is the product of many good people doing many good things. It is the ultimate in crowd sourced cycling!

Since this is a crowd sourced game, its time for the crowd to pontificate on how the game will be played. The goal is to come to consensus on this years version.

Lessons learned from last year

* Everyone who signs up must be reachable (dont assume they are watching the forum). I avoided collecting email addresses last year cause I did not want to handle PII. We had a number of people sign up but then never participate. Recommendation: This year we need some way to reach people. If we are able to use STRAVA this year, then everyone who signs up must (a) be a forum member and (b) be on STRAVA.

* This was really a community event of the forum. What made it fun was the banter in the cold of winter as we slogged our way through that 3 feet of snow last year. Recommendation: focus FS on the forum. Dont market it outside the forum. Assume participants are member participants.

* This is a crowd sourced game. We need lots of volunteers to handle all the different aspects of the game.

* This is a crowd sourced game run by volunteers. Please dont make the life of the volunteers more difficult.

* Late sign ups did not really work. The end result was the creation of an 11th team that never really got off the ground. We can just assign late sign ups to an N+1 team if we want – but I have no expectation that that team will be able to compete.

* Last year the handicap was based on November and December riding statistics (how much did you ride on average per week during November and December?). That actually seemed like it worked pretty well. What should this years handicap be based on? September perhaps for those who participated in the Natl Bike Challenge??

* Any other revisions??

Below is from last year:

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

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.

Topic

[ronwalf]

Strava removed their public API, so we’ll have to find a new backend for this year. I think there might be some solution where people can keep using Strava, but use tapiriik.com to sync their rides to DropBox or RunKeeper.

I have my dissertation defense scheduled for the 13th of December, and I won’t be able to pay much attention to BAFS until afterwards.

[GB]

@rcannon100 67817 wrote:

* This was really a community event of the forum. What made it fun was the banter in the cold of winter as we slogged our way through that 3 feet of snow last year. Recommendation: focus FS on the forum. Dont market it outside the forum. Assume participants are member participants.
….
* Late sign ups did not really work. The end result was the creation of an 11th team that never really got off the ground. We can just assign late sign ups to an N+1 team if we want – but I have no expectation that that team will be able to compete.

As a freezing saddles participant last year who wasn’t on the forum at the time, sorry for being hard to get a hold of. That said, it was my introduction to the forum. So do you really want to discourage that?

I was also a late sign-up (I know, I really messed things up last year), and from my perspective it worked just fine. So my team wasn’t competitive, I did my commute in the cold and was actually ranked fairly high in the middle of January (before audit busy season got into full swing).

Recommendation for this year – As a daily commuter with a 10 mile commute I thought that 10 pts just for riding on a day was too high relative to the 1 pt per mile. I suggest bringing it down to 1-5 pts just for turning on your Strava app.

[rcannon100]

That said, it was my introduction to the forum. So do you really want to discourage that?

It resulted in having to reshuffle the teams entirely once, and also doing a lot of footwork to find the people who did not sign up. If someone volunteers to track down non-forum participants, fine. But someone will have to volunteer for this work.

Volunteer jobs will include, among others
* Sign up (last year done through google docs)
* Backend data
* Sorting teams
* Team captains (who will work as a committee to work out any kerfluffles)
* Pointless awards (both the idea for the award, and the work analyzing the data)
* End Reception

[Hancockbs]

@GregBain 67820 wrote:

Recommendation for this year – As a daily commuter with a 10 mile commute I thought that 10 pts just for riding on a day was too high relative to the 1 pt per mile. I suggest bringing it down to 1-5 pts just for turning on your Strava app.

As someone who may have abused this last year, I completely agree that the points for ride verse miles needs to be better aligned.

[ronwalf]

@Hancockbs 67823 wrote:

As someone who may have abused this last year, I completely agree that the points for ride verse miles needs to be better aligned.

The National Bike Challenge actually went the other way (20 pt rides)! The free ten points encouraged me to get out on the bike even when it was bitter cold. We could incentivize the same behavior via some other mechanism (i.e., weight miles inversely proportional to the temperature), but that’s more complicated to set up/program.

[consularrider]

As someone who rode every day of last year’s event, but did not do a single “sleeze” ride, I have no problem with the 10 points per day, after all, that’s half the points per day of the NBC. I like having an incentive to reward people just for getting out each day they can, not just the miles for us long haul truckers. We might set the minimum bar a little higher, maybe two miles instead of one which would mean more than just riding around the block a couple of times.

[ShawnoftheDread]

I think 10 points per day worked out great, and made for a nice balance between encouraging daily riding by everyone and still rewarding those with longer commutes. I don’t think anyone was able to abuse sleaze rides or a short daily commute to out-score their miles. Of the top 10 riders last year, all were ranked the same by both points and miles, and the same mostly holds true for the next 10 riders as well.

[Subby]

I wouldn’t change a whole lot. From a competitor’s standpoint, I thought last year worked almost perfectly.

[hozn]

I think the 10 points is fine, but I would bump it up to 2 or 3 miles. 1 mile is a tiny bike ride.

Larger teams might ease the pressure a little…

[KayakCyndi]

@hozn 67828 wrote:

Larger teams might ease the pressure a little…

And make those of us with mandated international work travel in the Jan – March time frame feel a little less bad. That said, it is doubtful I would have ridden on three continents last winter without Freezing Saddles. Maybe pressure isn’t such a bad thing.

I second that the competition worked fabulously last year. I LOVED it and somehow haven’t managed to cut back my mileage since!

[Amalitza]

@hozn 67828 wrote:

I think the 10 points is fine, but I would bump it up to 2 or 3 miles. 1 mile is a tiny bike ride.

Larger teams might ease the pressure a little…

One mile *is* a tiny bike ride, but it did get me on the bike for trips to the store when it was bbbrrrrrrr out. If I’d had to do a 3 mile loop to get a bottle of wine, I’m not sure I would have.

[Hancockbs]

@ronwalf 67824 wrote:

The National Bike Challenge actually went the other way (20 pt rides)! The free ten points encouraged me to get out on the bike even when it was bitter cold. We could incentivize the same behavior via some other mechanism (i.e., weight miles inversely proportional to the temperature), but that’s more complicated to set up/program.

How about more points per more miles? 1-5 miles is 10 points for riding plus 1 point per miles, 6-10 gets 2 points per mile, 11-15 gets 3 points per mile, etc? I’m not suggesting these are the right numbers, just a concept.

[Hancockbs]

@ShawnoftheDread 67826 wrote:

I think 10 points per day worked out great, and made for a nice balance between encouraging daily riding by everyone and still rewarding those with longer commutes. I don’t think anyone was able to abuse sleaze rides or a short daily commute to out-score their miles. Of the top 10 riders last year, all were ranked the same by both points and miles, and the same mostly holds true for the next 10 riders as well.

Thanks for the analysis, it lessens my concern.

[GB]

Fair point; we already have a system of tracking miles, so making points match miles doesn’t make much sense. Since people will ride for points when they wouldn’t ride just for the miles then I’m fine with a points system that doesn’t closely match miles.

To the extent that this is a social thing on forum, how about points for photos? – you and your bike covered in snow, frozen water bottles, monuments in the snow, etc. These would be added at the end, rather than incorporated into the automated system (I assume it’s automated).

[Rod Smith]

For the record, the NBC did ‘not go the other way’. They gave twenty points (free miles) for every day last year too. As someone who pretty much has to ride every day, I’m fine with the 10 pts per day. 20 would be better. Double points for third axle? Just a thought.

My sleaze rides were 10 mile rides, but 1 mile rides should count too.

I didn’t know the handicap last year was based on Nov, Dec mileage. If that was clear to me, I would have given a lower number than I did when asked for a number.

I thought we were asked how much we typically ride during this calendar period. I don’t remember. The suggestion that we base the handicap on our September 2013 mileage is repugnant to me. I think we should use last year’s Freezing Saddles mileage as a baseline for those willing to sign up again, and let newcomers reckon how much they expect to ride as best they can.

@KayakCyndi 67829 wrote:

And make those of us with mandated international work travel in the Jan – March time frame feel a little less bad. That said, it is doubtful I would have ridden on three continents last winter without Freezing Saddles. Maybe pressure isn’t such a bad thing.

I second that the competition worked fabulously last year. I LOVED it and somehow haven’t managed to cut back my mileage since!

You have nothing to feel bad about! You rock!

[Author]

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