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

[hozn]

@PeteD 69781 wrote:

My update from Strava.

–Pete

That is awesome! Yeah, Collin from tapiriik.com also indicated this. So that is wonderful news; I’m happy they’re fixing the policy.

Probably we can just use Strava again then this year. That seems simplest all around. However, I *am* actively building the RWGPS support for tapiriik.com, so hopefully soon people will also be able to start using RWGPS with little/no additional effort. I started work last night and after getting some questions answered from Cullen @ RWGPS, I think I have what I need to complete that. I just need a few more hours of spare time. I like what RWGPS is doing and would love to support them, but the syncing capability is a requirement as I can’t be bothered to manually upload data to any site.

[rcannon100]

Massive!

Okay, we will pretend that the backend will magically materialize – and give you guys lots of chocolate for the holidays.

I will thus and therefore begin to work on sign up.

In listening to the conversation about Freezing Saddles, my presumption will be that last years rules are the status quo, unless we get consensus to change them.

I think the one clear item I heard consensus on was larger teams? Last year we took like 50 people and divided them into 10 teams of ~5 (based on handicaps). Its a push and a pull – the more people on teams the fewer the teams. What seems like a right number? Is 10 too big (with only 5 teams). Would it make more sense to have 8 on a team (with 6 teams). (these are all assumes sign up numbers for demo purposes).

I am not hearing consensus on the sleaze mile bonus? The daily bonus games the competition to favor the daily rider over the weekend distance warrior – and this is a commuter game. It is also a built in bonus for those who ride on the absolute worst days. As some have pointed out, a “1 mile” distance is legitimately for many of us the distance from our house to the coffee house on the corner – not a bad reason to ride. Comments (and LIKE any positions you support)?

I think the handicap is likely to remain the same? The question is currently “On average, how many miles did you ride per week and how many times did you ride per week during the month of November and December?”

The goal is to create teams who all have the same relative score based on that question (by grouping riders who have different value scores).

As for what the awards are – that isnt so much a consensus issue as someone needs to step up to the plate and volunteer to do the award (all of the data analysis, and getting the prizes). There are not official prizes; this isnt an official game. There is just someone volunteering.

The other volunteers we will need are team captains (last year I think this involved very little work – the major task is for the captain to handle any kerfuffle should any arise) and end of competition party.

Last year the competition ran Jan. 1 to the last day of winter (a bit more than 2.5 months).

[consularrider]

@rcannon100 69818 wrote:

… Okay, we will pretend that the backend will magically materialize – and give you guys lots of chocolate for the holidays …

I have a couple bottles of Sam Adams Chocolate Stout I can add to the pot.

[dasgeh]

@rcannon100 69818 wrote:

I am not hearing consensus on the sleaze mile bonus?

I vote for the limit for rides to “count” be 1 mile. (more than the average daily commute in Copenhagen, according to that other thread).

*Like to vote for this*

[ronwalf]

@dasgeh 69837 wrote:

I vote for the limit for rides to “count” be 1 mile.

Just a clarification from last year’s challenge. The 10pt bonus was for at least 1 mile of total mileage in a day. So if you took 3 separate tripes totaling .34 miles each, you’d be golden. I’m pretty sure both hozn and I implemented this rule the same way.

Separately, I probably can’t host the scoreboard this year (that whole graduation thing means UMD won’t give me free web space). That shouldn’t be a problem, since hozn’s scoreboard was pretty great.

[rcannon100]

@ronwalf 69843 wrote:

Just a clarification from last year’s challenge. The 10pt bonus was for at least 1 mile of total mileage in a day. So if you took 3 separate tripes totaling .34 miles each, you’d be golden. I’m pretty sure both hozn and I implemented this rule the same way.

Separately, I probably can’t host the scoreboard this year (that whole graduation thing means UMD won’t give me free web space). That shouldn’t be a problem, since hozn’s scoreboard was pretty great.

Can we just stick it up on a google site? It was javascript??

[vvill]

I believe hozn will be able to host it.

I think we should keep all the rules the same, and just have slightly larger teams (6-8 riders per team sounds about right). It worked so well last year we don’t need to make a whole bunch of changes.

Then just add some of the prize categories up front – average speed, climbing, climbing per mile, Hains Pt laps, time spent riding pre-dawn/post-dusk/below freezing, highest average ride length (the anti-sleaze award)?, or whatever, and we could even have people volunteer for awards in advance. These could all be team and/or individual as well.

[hozn]

@rcannon100 69844 wrote:

Can we just stick it up on a google site? It was javascript??

I believe it was Haskell! (ELITE!) I’m sorry that they won’t host it for you this year. Assuming Strava comes back online for developers (and some necessary code changes to use new API), shouldn’t be a problem with me running the leaderboards.

[rcannon100]

@vvill 69845 wrote:

Then just add some of the prize categories up front .

All we need is a volunteer. Which one are you volunteering for Will? Pick your favorite and its yours. You have to do the data munching and procure the trophies. Whoever is willing to volunteer gets to pick what the award is.

Freezing Saddles is whatever the volunteers make it; if there is no volunteer for X – then there is no X.

[KayakCyndi]

@vvill 69845 wrote:

Then just add some of the prize categories up front

As the reigning Queen of the World, who this year has more modest travel plans, I volunteer to pass my crown. The prize will go to the world traveler who logs rides on the most continents other than our own. If there is a tie the prize will go to the rider who earned the most KOMs/QOMs (assuming strava) on those rides.

[hozn]

@rcannon100 69863 wrote:

All we need is a volunteer. Which one are you volunteering for Will? Pick your favorite and its yours. You have to do the data munching and procure the trophies. Whoever is willing to volunteer gets to pick what the award is.

Freezing Saddles is whatever the volunteers make it; if there is no volunteer for X – then there is no X.

Assuming we have the data, I will build leaderboards for these alternate categories that people are volunteering to “sponsor”.

Just tell me the rules (and team vs individual, etc.). Obviously any of data mining categories from last year should work, but there are lots of things we could do. In general we have ride data, weather data (temps, precip, sunrise/set), etc. Always looking for fun ways to mash stuff together.

[vvill]

The two I awarded last year were a little more abstruse… one for the best map shape/design created by a ride’s GPS track, and one was for the most manual entries.

I’m happy to award the first one again (best map shape/design created by a ride’s GPS track). The second one is a bit silly to nominate upfront, and I think almost everyone has Strava tracks now either via a Garmin style GPS or smart phone – so I’ll leave it out this time around. I’ll see if I can think of something else interesting, but yeah in the meantime people are free to suggest categories, or volunteer to award one.

[Justin Antos]

Given his commute last year from DC to Arlington VIA WEST VIRGINIA, I nominate DismalScientist to award the most Gratuitously Circuitous Commute this year!

[rcannon100]

First Place Awards -> I am glad to pass the baton if someone else wants to handle this, otherwise I am glad to handle first place – most likely coordinating again with Phoenix Bikes for marvelous artistic creations. Henry Dunbar has already asked if we plan on doing this again. I think they very much liked this (their silent action will be in May or something this year so we wont have the presentation during their party like we did last year).

[IMG]http://bikearlingtonforum.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=2337&d=1359231901[/IMG]

[jopamora]

[Author]

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