Freezing Saddles 2014 Rules

[rcannon100]

Consensus:

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

Freezing Saddles! The Epic Adventure of a band of ELITE Cyclists, facing the challenges of the wild wild winter 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 19. There will be a Happy Hour at the end with many pointless trophies.

* Tribes (teams):
** Composed of ~8 riders or less
** For riders from the WABA / Bike Arlington forum
** 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 (this year absolute – I have other things that I will have to be attending to).
* Interested cyclists must sign up by December 24 Midnight – Tribes will be announced within a couple days.
* All rides must be logged by DATE in order to be included
* No sandbagging.
* Communications will be through the forum.

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).

La Strava
* We will honor the “trainer” checkbox in Strava; those rides will be ignored. As will rides with #NoBAFS (case-insensitive) in the ride name.
* Any rides with kiddos on your bike can be tagged in the ride name with #Kidical for a kidically pointless prize.
* In order for rides to be counted, the athletes will need to authorize the Freezing Saddles application to read their Strava data. (Details coming very soon on how to do that.)
* Also, riders will need to be a member of their “tribe” Strava club in order for their rides to count (we’ll only be showing riders that are on one of the competition teams) — and I will need the list of those team IDs for configuring the scoreboard. Of course any recorded rides will be counted retroactively if any of the team captains are late in getting the clubs formed (or late in getting me the ID of the clubs … or I’m late in updating the app configuration).

Freezing Saddles is a self organized effort of the participants. Freezing Saddles is not sponsored by anyone (it is not sponsored by Bike Arlington or by WABA). There is no organization. It is just a bunch of people coming together to be silly and ride bikes when it is really really cold. Your participation in Freezing Saddles is voluntary and at your own risk and you have not paid anyone anything to participate. Please volunteer to help make this self organized effort succeed.

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]

@rcannon100 73469 wrote:

Honz, you have it config’red such that a Sleaze Ride is any ride that equals 11 or 12 points. So – for us to be liberated of the disparagement of having ridden a sleaze ride – we have to have ridden 3 miles? (as opposed to say 2.1 miles). Is that correct sir?

We can change it. It was an arbitrary cutoff. I thought it was any ride that was more than one but less than 2 miles. But maybe I did less than 3. I can check.

What should it be?

[sjclaeys]

@rcannon100 73469 wrote:

Honz, you have it config’red such that a Sleaze Ride is any ride that equals 11 or 12 points. So – for us to be liberated of the disparagement of having ridden a sleaze ride – we have to have ridden 3 miles? (as opposed to say 2.1 miles). Is that correct sir?

My recollection from last year is that the mileage was rounded down to the whole mile. Thus, if you are at 10.8 miles, it is worth going .2 more to get the extra point.

[rcannon100]

@hozn 73473 wrote:

We can change it. It was an arbitrary cutoff. I thought it was any ride that was more than one but less than 2 miles. But maybe I did less than 3. I can check.

What should it be?

Arbitrary, in this game, I believe is a feature. I see no need to change it. I merely want to know how much effort I must waste. Do I need to hit 2.1 miles or 3? :rolleyes: (Three does seem to be a good cut off to officially not be sleaze)

[Amalitza]

@sjclaeys 73474 wrote:

My recollection from last year is that the mileage was rounded down to the whole mile. Thus, if you are at 10.8 miles, it is worth going .2 more to get the extra point.

Mileage is not rounded (unless hozn has changed the accounting from last year). If you ride 10.8 miles today and 10.2 miles tomorrow, you have 21 miles total, not 20. HOWEVER, you only get your 10 daily points if you ride at least one full mile (per day, not per ride). I accidentally rode 0.99miles once last year and I didn’t get my ten points for the day until I went out and rode another little bit. It still counts in total mileage, though.

[sjclaeys]

@acl 73477 wrote:

Mileage is not rounded (unless hozn has changed the accounting from last year). If you ride 10.8 miles today and 10.2 miles tomorrow, you have 21 miles total, not 20. HOWEVER, you only get your 10 daily points if you ride at least one full mile (per day, not per ride). I accidentally rode 0.99miles once last year and I didn’t get my ten points for the day until I went out and rode another little bit. It still counts in total mileage, though.

I was referring to points accumulation, not miles. I fairly clearly remember riding say 12.6 miles and getting 22 points.

[vvill]

I thought both this and last year, 2.5miles would round to 3 and 2.4 to 2 for points.

Which means to avoid a sleaze 2.5 miles is needed. Seems like a decent mileage for days like today, and only a slight extension to a short errand ride.

[hozn]

Ok, I checked the code. So the way it is coded now (which was intended to match ronwalf’s algorithm, but of course we can agree to change) points are not rounded in the database. It is simply X + sum(mileage) where X is 10.0 if sum(mileage) >= 1.0.

I haven’t confirmed this, but i believe points are rounded down (truncated) in the display only — as is mileage (we store much more precise representation than we show). So two 2.5-point days will be 5 points. I don’t think there is any rounding in the system except for display.

A sleaze ride (as is only used for that one chart) is one where points > 11.0 and < 12.0 (no rounding happening there). So 1.0 - 2.0 miles should be the only thing that matches. Again, we can adjust. Hope that helps clarify. Let me know if you see evidence that this explanation is wrong.

[peterw_diy]

@hozn 73500 wrote:

A sleaze ride (as is only used for that one chart) is one where points > 11.0 and < 12.0 (no rounding happening there). So 1.0 - 2.0 miles should be the only thing that matches. Again, we can adjust. Hope that helps clarify. Let me know if you see evidence that this explanation is wrong.

To clarify: there are not sleaze rides but sleaze days. A sleaze day is any day when a rider put in at least 1 mile but less than 2 miles. Ride exactly 2 miles (even if spread over 10 rides that day) and you’ll earn 12 points and avoid being flagged as having a sleaze day. (I’m basing this on https://github.com/hozn/bafs/blob/7d492b9aa7c4379dfae13d2e4b02341c0b53ee0b/bafs/views/chartdata.py#L193.) Team sleaze days follow the same logic (individuals riding > 1 mi but < 2 mi in one day). Ride less than one mile total on a day, and it’s not sleaze. Makes sense, since you’re not getting the 10 point bonus for < 1 mile/day.

[hozn]

Yes, that is correct; thanks for the clarification. If it says sleaze “rides” anywhere we should fix that.

[peterw_diy]

@hozn 73510 wrote:

Yes, that is correct; thanks for the clarification. If it says sleaze “rides” anywhere we should fix that.

Nah, at least in the master branch source I only see it being labeled correctly, as sleaze days.

[rcannon100]

“Sleaze Rides” is what we have been calling it since before BAFS was even formed. It dates back to the National Bike Challenge. The colloquial term is “Sleaze Rides” because you are cheezing points on a cheap ride. It usually involves a pointless ride to nowhere (you know, like riding to work). It is a ride taken for the soul purpose of bogarting those 10 points.

As for the rounding, HONZ, that’s how I had remembered it. All ride distance is cumulative. Two rides of 2.5 on different days gets you 5 points (as opposed to 2.5 getting rounded up to 3 x 2 days = 6 points; or as opposed to just losing any distance gained after the decimal).

As far as what is a sleaze ride, I am indifferent, and if you are basing it on what Ron did, then magnificent. I just love that in your data you can measure how many sleaze rides people took – knowing that >2 miles is the magic distance, we know what is expected in order to not be disparaged. The one award I dont want to receive is the one for the most sleaze rides ridden :p

[vvill]

No rounding/truncating until display – sounds good. Thanks hozn.

3300 metres would probably be rounded to 2.1 miles by Strava, so that’s probably the least you can do to avoid the sleaze moniker.

[dkel]

I came home from work and put in a sleazy 2.4, only to find out it’s not sleazy at all! Best day ever! (So relieved that I didn’t lose both thumbs to frostbite on a sleaze ride.) (And why were my thumbs the only part of me that was freezing?!?) (I had decent elevation gain, though, which is good.) (Aren’t parentheses great?) ((()))(())((()))

[peterw_diy]

@vvill 73514 wrote:

3300 metres would probably be rounded to 2.1 miles by Strava, so that’s probably the least you can do to avoid the sleaze moniker.

1) Strava’s API gives distance in meters; it’s bafs that converts to miles, and from what I see, bafs does not round the numbers deliberately, so it could probably store 3219 m as something like 2.000198839275728 mi

2) You need 2 miles, no more.

[Justin Antos]

So my bike commute is down to 0.9 miles in, 0.9 miles out. I guess I better do some loop-de-loops to get over 2.0 so every day isn’t counted as sleaze for me .

Hozn, how are runs and walks handled? Okay to put those on Strava and they’re excluded?

[Author]

Replies