Freezing Saddles 2014 Discussion Draft

[NicDiesel]

Can I join this years Freezing Saddles from the balmy shores of Lake Nokomis (i.e. MPLS)?

[Dickie]

Still on the fence whether I will participate this year or not. I provided some pointless prizes and attended the awards ceremony last year but did not actually belong to a team. I concur that a common complaint I heard was that teams were too small; an illness, travel, accident, whatever could destroy a team’s chances and motivation completely. Perhaps a mid winter draft or trade window could be utilized or simply larger teams. I would also agree that the pointless prizes should be announced from the beginning and some of the more “data” sensitive ones should be part of the points competition. I think the balance of 10 points for riding and 1 point per mile is perfect encouragement for both camps or riders. I love the idea of different competitions all combining for points…. mileage, most days ridden, elevation, etc.

However, I think we really need to keep things as simple as possible or else the competition becomes a convoluted tangle of data and loop holes. Tiered mileage points, scavenger hunts, random bonus points, etc although fantastic ideas will only confuse the issue especially for the volunteers responsible for counting the data. If it is too difficult to explain in the written rules then it is too hard to follow as a competitor…. at least that’s my opinion.

[NicDiesel]

Every 15 minutes ridden in -20 degree weather (with the windchill) gives you 15 points.

[DismalScientist]

Sorry, but that depends on whether you are riding with or against the wind. So you can’t do it with a windchill adjustment.

Unfortunately, if only got down to -13 on February 1, 2013 for last year’s Minneapolis winter.

[NicDiesel]

dismalscientist;68390 wrote:

sorry, but that depends on whether you are riding with or against the wind. So you can’t do it with a windchill adjustment.

Unfortunately, if only got down to -13 on february 1, 2013 for last year’s minneapolis winter.

quit killing my fun holmes!

[creadinger]

I’m planing on joining Freezing Saddles this year. I’m hoping it will provide good motivation to keep commuting through the cold and dark a couple of times/week and get out to do the grocery trips and fun rides too. I’m open to helping out with stuff if necessary too.

As a FS noob, all of the suggestions for this year sound fine to me EXCEPT I would make the sleaze ride minimum 2 miles instead of 1. If you’re going to get 11-12 points, you should at least have to be outside for more than 5 minutes. 5 minutes is almost not even worth putting on extra clothing for, and then who cares if it’s 20 degrees or 80?

[rcannon100]

Ok, so at this point, we have no backend. We have no way of doing the game. Last year we used STRAVA with open APIs. So…. can anyone volunteer…. not asking for someone to run the backend…. asking for someone to research what the backend options are.

* We could do google docs, but I would anticipate this will require a lot of work on the part of captains. (A google form would pour data into a google doc which would act as the scorecard for each team).

* Is strava out? Can make teams on strava, where we record miles- and then that information gets moved to a google doc scorecard?

Thoughts? Ideas?

[GB]

@Dickie 68381 wrote:

However, I think we really need to keep things as simple as possible or else the competition becomes a convoluted tangle of data and loop holes. Tiered mileage points, scavenger hunts, random bonus points, etc although fantastic ideas will only confuse the issue especially for the volunteers responsible for counting the data. If it is too difficult to explain in the written rules then it is too hard to follow as a competitor…. at least that’s my opinion.

My thought for the points not automatically calculated on a factor of miles + days is that these points would be tracked by the individual and then prize contenders will be audited. Because I completely agree that it is too much to ask 1 or 2 people to keep track of everyone’s random points.

As for explaining the rules for these extra points here’s my proposal:

Pics: you get the average of the first 3 responses to your picture (responses should be between 0 and 10 pts)
Destination: each team gets to pick 1 destination that is open to everyone is active for 1 week. In order for your ride at that destination to count it needs to be at least 1 mile long (or as long as we decide the daily minimum is) and take place during the active week. These rides will be worth 20 points + miles points + daily points. (note- daily and milage points will be calculated automatically, so you just need to keep track of which destination rides you did.

Those are the non-automatic points I’d most like to see. But if it doesn’t happen I’ll get over it really quickly.

It is up the individual to keep track of points earned for pictures and destinations. You must be able to prove your points in order for them to count.

I’ll volunteer to audit *some* of the winners points if we go this route.

[ronwalf]

@rcannon100 68895 wrote:

* Is strava out? Can make teams on strava, where we record miles- and then that information gets moved to a google doc scorecard?

I’ve done minor amounts of research through the year. Short answer is that since tapiriik can sync Strava with several services that do have open APIs, whatever solution we come up with could let GPS users enter their miles through Strava (or Garmin Connect, or Run Keeper or wherever).

However, tapiriik does not support syncing manual activities. If I remember right, we have a good percentage of people who entered their miles manually. Some type of Google Forms/Docs solution might work well (although it probably needs to allow editing to correct mistakes) for the manual users.

I don’t see a way to make teams and team membership quite a seamless as last year.

[GB]

@ronwalf 68897 wrote:

If I remember right, we have a good percentage of people who entered their miles manually.

Surprising that percentage seems to go up as the temp go down – must that the electronics don’t work so well in the cold.

[rcannon100]

then prize contenders will be audited

By whom? Are you volunteering?

Please remember that we need volunteers to do all this stuff. Last year we had lots and lots and lots of people volunteer to give a pointless award, if someone else would do the data crunching for them. Um, no. We need volunteers who will do the work.

Or we need a backend that will do the work.

Or we need some magic pixie dust. Mmmmmm, magic pixie dust!

[GB]

@rcannon100 68901 wrote:

By whom? Are you volunteering?

‘

Yes, see last line of same post. Sorry I can’t help out on any of the IT side of things. But if people keep as list of points earned on which days, I should be able to verify *some* them in the forum’s pics for points thread (still to be started) or on Strava.

[hozn]

I agree with Dickie, making some of the pointless prizes official seems like a good idea, but it has to be dead simple. (Should they then become tram competitions/prizes probably?) Most miles in dark, in freezing temps, etc. Those are easy to track. I don’t think we want any categories that have to be tracked by hand.

I will do some research on the API front tonight and see what our options are. Ron is right that tapiriik makes this more straightforward. We may be able to use Strava despite the locked down API, not sure. It may not be worth it if it violates their TOS,anyway, though. I think it would be unfortunate to use a back end that did not have a GPS component, since that makes many of the prizes possible (those that record manually would probably just be out of contention for those other prizes).

[rcannon100]

We had approx 50 riders last year. We had ten teams of 5. We could have 5 teams of ten this year. Or seven teams of 7. Whichever. But the pool of riders is relatively small- change the denominator and change the number of teams.

Nothing is “official.” There is no entity running this thing. Its just volunteers.

Convoluted. – Based on last year’s experience, that’s not really a concern. Because, again, its all volunteers. Whatever the prize or award is, its what one person volunteers to do. Now, first place, that’s easy. That’s just a count. But other awards? Well – as of right now – the only firm award I would say we have is First place. If someone has an idea for other awards – great! And if someone wants to step up to donate something for those awards – Great!

[hozn]

I think the backend is only really needed for storing the mileage. People could use clubs in Strava to group the teams, but we cannot poll Strava for the data. We can, however, poll other services that tapiriik will sync to. In addition to Endomondo, it looks like RunKeeper has a pretty solid API. Garmin Connect does too.

I can evolve my software platform from last year to do the team organization (team pages), etc.

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